The Role of Engaged Reading in Conceptual Learning from Text and Reading Comprehension of EFL Learners: A Modeling Approach

Abstract

Problem Statement: This paper investigates the relationships between EFL learners' level of reading engagement and their conceptual knowledge from text and reading proficiency.
Methods: In the first phase, non–modeling approach, the research questions were explored through traditional correlation and regression analyses.
Findings and Results: The findings of this part show that reading engagement has a statistically significant relationship with reading proficiency and conceptual knowledge. Meanwhile, no consensus was fund between students' and their teachers' perspectives concerning the students' level of reading engagement; this provided the ground for the second phase of this research. In the second phase, modeling approach was employed to examine the relationship between QMRI, showing students’ level of reading engagement from their own perspectives, and REI, illustrating students' level of reading engagement from their teachers’ viewpoints, through structural equation modeling. Having analyzed the data through LISREL, the researchers found no significant relationship between QMRI and REI, confirming findings of the first phase.
Conclusions and Recommendations: The results of this study might make the educators become increasingly interested in the role that reading engagement can play in the growth of academic achievement. It is also believed that reading engagement itself serves to increase the achievement differences among students.

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