Enhancing EFL Freshman Students’ Reading
Skills with Online Activities
Prof. Reima AlJarf
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
7th Asia CALL Conference. University of Suranaree, Thailand. November 21
23, 2008.
Two groups of freshman students participated in the study. The pre‐test scores
showed no significant differences between both groups in their reading skills.
Then, both groups studied the same reading textbook, and completed the same
lessons and exercises in that textbook. In addition, the experimental group used
an online course with Nicenet (www.nicenet.org). They accessed the Nicenet
reading course from home. Every week, reading websites (hyperlinks) related to
the reading skills covered in class were added in “Link Sharing”. The links
contained short stories, world newspapers, an ESL students’ magazine, reading
comprehension, main idea, recognizing details, and guessing meaning from
context examples and exercises. The students checked the specific reading links
posted, answered the reading quizzes and did the exercises. 30% of the websites
were posted by the students. Questions that required the students to write a
paragraph about themes similar to those read in class were posted in the
“Conferencing” area. The discussion threads also covered paragraphs written by
the students on themes of their choice. Exercises that required the students to
find the main idea, identify details, recognize the pattern of organization, guess
word meaning from context, and understand idioms and phrasal verbs were
posted. In addition, reading study guides and strategies help with reading
problems, test anxiety and factors that lead to success were also posted in the
“conferencing” or “Documents” areas of the course. Comparisons of the post‐test
mean scores showed significant differences between the experimental and
control groups. Results showed that in learning environments whe