The Effect of Text Structure and Signaling Devices on Recall of Freshman Arab Students

The problem of this study was to examine the effect of text structure and signaling devices on immediate and delayed recalls of freshman Arabic-speaking students after reading a text. Subjects for the study were forty-five freshman Arabic-speaking students enrolled in three freshman English courses at a state university. All subjects were male students. The subjects-were chosen on a voluntary basis. The subjects were given the Reading Comprehension Section of the TOEFL. They were then divided into groups of good, average, and poor readers according to their performance on the TOEFL. Two well—organized passages of expository text with clearly identifiable top-level structure of problem/solution and appropriate reading levels were selected for the study. Two versions of each passage were adapted — one with the signaling devices included in the passage and the other with the signaling devices deleted. Each subject read one version of each of the two passages. The immediate and delayed recalls of the subjects were scored by an unbiased scorer. The scorer was an expert teacher of English to foreign students. Hypothesis I stated that good readers would be able to utilize the writer's rhetorical mode of the text at a significantly higher level than average and poor readers. This hypothesis was supported. The results of Chi square analysis was significant at the .03 level for immediate recall, and at the .01 level for the delayed recall. Hypothesis II stated that readers of each of the three groups who followed the original rhetorical mode of the text would recall significantly more information than those who failed to do so. This hypothesis was also supported. The results of the Two-way Analysis of Variance were significant at the .01 level for both immediate and delayed recalls. Hypothesis III stated that the students of all three groups would recall significantly more information from the passage with signaling devices than from the passage without signaling devices. This hypothesis was not supported. Signaling devices helped good and average readers to recall significantly more information, while the group of poor readers was not affected by the presence of these signaling devices. The findings suggest that training non-native speakers in identifying and utilizing different rhetorical structures might facilitate their reading comprehension. There is also a parallel need in writing instruction so that writers can . offer this facility to their readers