An Analysis of the Reading Skills Employed by Freshmen in Reading Amharic and English
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Date
1998-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
In this study an effort is made to find out whether Freshmen
slow reading is attributed to the lack of general knowledge of
English or due to the use of Amharic rl3ading techniques whi l e -
reading English.
To t es t this, a questionnaire, reading speed and reading
techniques tests were prepared and were ad~inistered simultaneously .
The researcher selected 120 students at r a ndom for the test.
However, 119 students participated in the exam. The scores were
computed for three groups . The ' overall group ', the ' goo d' and
'poor' r eaders groups , and the 'language subgroup' group.
From the scores the overall group performed better in reading
English ana reading techniques in English at a statistica lly
significantJevel by 5%. However, since mean values can be
affected by extreme cases, the researcher h ad also tested the two
~xtreme readers, that is, ' good' and ' poor' readers . Primarily, C'
computations for good r eaders in both languages showed that good -
readers are better at reading Amharic than reading English (221.7
to 177.3). And, the researcher r efe rred to their achievement in reading
techniques in both l anguages to check whether slow re ading can
be attributed to transfer from Amharic to English. It was found that
the reading techniques results we re b e tter in English than in
Amharic (of the same individuals) . And, the assumption got little
support .
On the othe r hand , ' poor ' reade rs have pe rformed, much poorer
than ' a verage ' freshmen understudy, in reading speed, comprehension
and in reading techniques . The 'good' readers have showed a correlation
of (.3, .1) in reading speed a nd in comprehension in both languages.
Furthermore, the subgroups have performed better in reading
speed than in comprehension, and the scores indicate that there is
moderate correlation between reading in Amharic and r e ading in
English specially among Tigrigna and Oromo speakers.
Therefore, on the basis of these findings studento' slow
reading in attributed to lack of comprehension (which is largely
affected by lack of language competence) in FLrather than totransfer
of techniques from Amharic to English.