Effects of Three Semantic Mapping Strategies on EFL Students' Reading Comprehension

A study compared the effectiveness of three classroom methods for teaching semantic mapping to college-level learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Subjects were 187 freshmen at an Egyptian university, randomly assigned to three treatment groups: teacher-initiated semantic mapping; student-mediated semantic mapping; and teacher-student interactive semantic mapping. Treatment was administered over 5 months in one session per week. Subjects were pre- and post-tested in reading comprehension. While the pretest indicated no significant differences in the groups, post-test results revealed students in the teacher-student interactive semantic mapping group scored significantly higher than the other two groups, which had similar results.

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