專有名詞補充對不同科系大學生專業英文閱讀之效果

Toward an Understanding of the Effects of Terminology on EAP Reading Comprehension for University Students of Two Academic Majors

本研究旨在探討專有名詞的補充，對政治與英文主修學生，理解國際政治英文專業教科書的效果，研究以量化統計比較兩科系學生，對於專有名詞補充與否，在英文閱讀上是否有差異；其次，再比較閱讀中文或英文的專有名詞補充，何種語文對於具政治專業和具有語言專業兩種主修的學生，學術英文閱讀理解表現影響較大，最後再從受試者中挑選學科成績高和低的學生進行訪談。研究發現，名詞補充對英文閱讀理解對兩科系皆有效果。統計上中英文書寫的專有名詞效果相同，而英文系學生對英文專業文章的閱讀理解，勝過政治系學生。學生應持續提升英文能力，才能強化專業閱讀理解。

 

To promote internationalization, textbooks written in English are commonly used in higher education. This study aimed to investigate the effects of domain-related terminology lists on university students of different academic majors by using statistical measures to facilitate academic reading. This study also explored which language support, L1 or L2 terminology list, can better enhance the domain-specific reading performance of students specializing in two different fields. Participants from two majors, political science and English literature, were recruited. The influence of terminology and the impact of different language inputs were investigated. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect students’ self-reported perceptions toward the effects of terminology. It was discovered that reading comprehension was improved by the provision of the terminology for both majors. The effects of terminology from the L1 list was statistically equivalent to the L2 list. English major students performed consistently better than their political science counterparts. The interview data revealed that students believed that in order to improve their academic reading comprehension, more support from content-area instructors should be given. The findings suggest that reading pedagogy in academic settings should include explicit terminology provisions. In order to deepen university students’ reading comprehension, a priority of teaching should focus on improving their reading proficiency as they develop content knowledge.