Catálogo de Investigaciones | 2011-2012

121 Catálogo de Investigaciones | Pontificia Universidad Católica de Puerto Rico The effect of explicit context clues strategy in reading comprehension test scores of Puerto Rican nonnative speakers of English in third grade in the Ponce School District The purpose of this research was to identify the effect that explicit context clues strategies had on reading comprehension test scores of Puerto Rican non-native speakers of English in third grade, measured by a reading comprehension test. This research aimed at studying if the strategy of context clues, as a vocabulary knowledge activity, had a significant effect on reading comprehension test scores. The design of this investigation was a quasi-experimental design which does not randomly assign the participants of the study. This research identified three groups of third grade students. As part of the design of this experiment, a reading comprehension pre-test and post-test was developed by the researcher. The participants from the Experimental Group received instruction using explicit context clues strategies for a minimum of 20 minutes a day after the English class, during an eight week period. The researcher used a t -Test to determine if a significant difference existed between the mean scores of the pre-tests and post-tests of the experimental and control groups. After the t -test was used, an ANOVA test determined that no significant difference existed between the mean scores and variance of the experimental and control groups. The analysis of the Reading Comprehension Pre-Post-test scores indicated that no significant difference existed between Experimental and Control Groups. However, a significant difference was found between the Control Group 2 and the Experimental Group post-tests scores, with the mean scores from the Control Group 2 higher than the mean scores of the Experimental Group. Even so, the statistical analysis of the pre- and post-test scores of the Experimental Group, the Control Group 1 and Control Group 2 did not indicate significant differences. The short progress tests used for the evaluation of the participants from the Experimental Group during the treatment did show significant mean scores for the use of example, definition, and antonym context clues. ivianna delgado acevedo mentor dra. irma n. rodríguez explicit context clues strategy reading comprehension third grade english students