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The Effects of Suprasegmental Phonological Training on English Reading Comprehension: Evidence from Chinese EFL Learners

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Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effect of suprasegmental phonological training on connected-text reading comprehension of Chinese university students with different English reading proficiency levels. A sample of 160 freshmen was recruited and randomly divided into experimental and control groups, and the experimental group was given a 12-week training on stress, intonation and rhythm in English. Comparison and analysis of the subjects’ reading comprehension performance, involving overall accuracy and speed as well as literal and inferential comprehension, reveal that: (1) suprasegmental phonological training exerts positive effects on the subjects’ overall reading comprehension, especially on reading time and literal comprehension; (2) lower-proficiency readers improve more remarkably than higher-proficiency readers in terms of overall accuracy and literal comprehension, while the effect of the training on reading time is significant regardless of the subjects’ reading proficiency. The results indicate that with explicit instruction and intensive exposure to suprasegmental knowledge, students’ automaticity in lower level processing, such as parsing and understanding propositional messages, can be increased. From a perspective of interaction among different cognitive and psychological processes of reading comprehension, this study can shed light on developing students' reading comprehension in EFL contexts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Gang Cui & Xiaoyun Zhong

  2. Department of Foreign Languages, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yuquan Road 19#, Beijing, 100049, China

    Yuemin Wang

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  1. Gang Cui
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Correspondence to Yuemin Wang.

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The mistake in the statistical analyses of the Results section has been corrected, a series of “F(1,157)” and “F(1,77)” have been mistakenly changed to “F(1157)” and “F(177)”, which occur 7 times altogether both in the text and the 2 tables.

Appendix: Examples of Test Items

Appendix: Examples of Test Items

Sample Literal Question

What do people think about the black and white only print? (Key: B).

  1. A.

    Consumers dislike these products.

  2. B.

    People have to pay more attention to the information.

  3. C.

    That makes all products look alike.

  4. D.

    Sighted people make feel it more helpful.

(Corresponding text: If all packaging is white with black lettering, people would have no choice but to read every box carefully.)

Sample Inferential Question

Why does the author mention “popper” and “pluspoint”? (Key: A).

  1. A.

    to show that container design has made some progress

  2. B.

    to illustrate an example of inappropriate design which can lead to accidents

  3. C.

    to show that the industry still needs more to improve

  4. D.

    to point out that consumers should be more informed about the information

(Corresponding text: “The popper”, by Hugo Glover, aims to help arthritis sufferers remove tablets from blister packs, and “pluspoint”, by James Cobb, is an adrenaline auto-injector that aims to overcome the fact that many patients do not carry their auto-injectors due to their prohibitive size.)

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Cui, G., Wang, Y. & Zhong, X. The Effects of Suprasegmental Phonological Training on English Reading Comprehension: Evidence from Chinese EFL Learners. J Psycholinguist Res 50, 317–333 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09743-2

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