Globalisation and technological advancements actualize the necessity for comprehensive English language proficiency. This highlights the importance of an effective English as a foreign language (EFL) education in order to meet this demand. Despite the broad scope of research in multimodal methods as an aid in a reading comprehension context, there is a significant gap, which is particularly evident in addressing students in grades four to six and especially from a Scandinavian perspective. This study employed a quasi-experimental design to investigate the impact of integrating dual multimodal methods (visual aid + text) on the acquisition of receptive vocabulary and reading comprehension proficiency of EFL students in Swedish compulsory school year six. The study also aimed to explore which proficiency levels among students benefit from the incorporation of visual aids. Forty-eight participants from two urban schools in Stockholm, Sweden, were divided into an intervention group (visuals + text) and a control group (text) before subsequently undergoing a pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest focused on receptive vocabulary acquisition. A reading comprehension assignment was carried out with the aim of evaluating participants' reading comprehension proficiency. The treatment was completed by the control and intervention group with the difference being that the latter received the assignment with visual aids. The results illustrate that the use of multimodal methods improved participants' reading comprehension proficiency and short-term vocabulary recall. However, in the long term, reliance on visual aids led to a decline in scores, while traditional text-based instruction showed further improvement. The results suggest that less proficient learners were aided to a greater extent by visual aids than highly proficient learners. These results shed light on the benefits and limitations of multimodal methods, emphasising the need for further research to assess their long-term effects and to further decide who they may aid or harm.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hig-44906 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Sjöberg, Magdalena |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för humaniora |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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