連接詞對台灣高職生英文閱讀理解的影響

Abstract

本研究旨在探討連接詞對台灣高職生英文閱讀理解的影響，分別從以下兩方面來探討：一、連接詞是否對閱讀理解有幫助？二、那些類的連接詞較簡單？哪些類較困難？\r\n 總共有七十五位高職生參與本實驗研究，他們共接受了「有」、「無」連接詞兩種版本的閱讀測驗，以及一個克漏字測驗，所收集的資料更進一步分為高低程度來探討，並加以統計的方式分析。\r\n 結果顯示連接詞在英文閱讀理解上的確有正面的影響，然而，高程度組在整篇文章的文意的理解上受益較大，相反地，低程度組則在細節的了解上所獲得的幫助較多，此發現說明了高程度的學生所採取的閱讀方式為「由上往下」，而低程度的學生則採取「由下往上」的方式。本研究也發現了在連接詞本身的理解上，由簡單到困難的順序為：遞增類(additive)、時間類(temporal)、轉折類(adversative)、 因果類(causal)，此順序沒有高低程度的不同，表示語言本身句型結構的難易與相對的認知困難度才是決定此順序的關鍵。同時，越簡單的連接詞，如：遞增類，高低程度學生的表現差異越大，而最困難的連接詞：因果類，高低程度學生的表現並無不同。最後，錯誤分析發現了高程度的學生對自己選擇的答案較有自信，而低程度的學生則傾向用遞增類來取代其他類的連接詞。

This present study aims to investigate the influence of logical conjunctions on Taiwanese vocational high school students’ English reading comprehension. It mainly discusses whether logical conjunctions play a facilitating role as well as determines what types of logical relations are more challenging and what types are easier.\r\n This study adopted an experimental design. A total of 75 EFL students participated in the experiment. They received two versions of reading comprehension tests: texts with / without logical conjunctions first and then a cloze test. The data collected from the high and low groups were compared and analyzed statistically.\r\n The results confirm the effects of conjunctions and the sequence of comprehension difficulty among the four types of relations. Logical conjunctions are facilitating in EFL students’ reading comprehension. They are beneficial to the high group in overall comprehension of the texts while they are more helpful to the low group in the understanding of detailed information. This finding suggests that higher achievers adopt a more top-down approach in reading whereas lower achievers adopt a more bottom-up approach. As for the sequence of comprehension difficulty, the results revealed an ascending difficulty order: additive, temporal, adversative, and causal conjunctions. The fact that no different order was found between the high and low groups suggests that linguistic complexity and cognitive processing difficulty are more likely the causes of this order instead of language proficiency. Also, it is found that the gap between the two groups is becoming widened as the difficulty level is decreasing. For example, the high group performed much better than the low group in additive conjunctions, but it performed as poorly as the low group did in causal ones. Finally, error analysis also discovered that higher achievers are more confident and capable in choosing their own answers while lower achievers tend to substitute additive conjunctions for the other ones.