Online readtheory program impact on the development of EFL students’ reading skills

Abstract

This quasi-experimental study addressed the impact that the Online Readtheory.org website has on Politécnica Salesiana University students’ reading comprehension skills. It is based on Krashen´s hypothesis about comprehensible input, Bloom’s Taxonomy and Kurland’s theory about Critical Reading. The sample was selected and divided into two groups (control and experimental) of 25 participants each. Students in the experimental group worked with the ReadTheory website, while the control group worked with reading activities taken from different sources. A pretest and posttest design were applied with the intention to test the hypothesis of Krashen (1985) that indicates that Comprehensible Input would positively influence learners’ progress by receiving input that was one step higher on his/her actual stage (p. 2). A survey after the intervention was applied to the experimental group to know students´ opinions on the use of the program. In the experimental group, findings revealed that the program influenced students’ reading – comprehension skills; however, a comparison between both groups (experimental and control) did not reveal significant differences. Although the main conclusion, which answers the Research Question of this study, is that there is no significant impact of this ReadTheory.org program on second level students’ reading skills, there are some essential variables that played an important role in this study which must be taken into account for further studies.