The Effect of a Program based on Knowledge Navigation on Developing EFL Reading and Writing Skills for Prep Students

Abstract

Author's name: Rabea Fayez Faheim Ali Supervisors' names: Prof. MagdyMahdy Ali – Dr DaliaIbrahimYahya Research title: the effect of a program based on knowledge navigation on developing EFL reading and writing skills for prep students. Source: Faculty of Education, Ain Shams University Abstract: the aim of this research was to investigate the effect of using knowledge navigation on developing prep students' English reading and writing skills. Based on reviewing literature and related studies, the researcher investigated the theoretical framework of knowledge navigation, and reading and writing skills. The instruments of the research included: a list of reading and writing skills; a pre-post reading and writing skills test; an analytical writing skills rubric and a satisfaction questionnaire. Also,a knowledge navigation based reading and writing skills program was designed. Sixty students from second year students in Hassan Abu Bakr prep school, QalyobyaGovernoratewere randomly nominated. The students were assigned equally to be an experimental group (30) and control group members (30). Then the experimental group members received training through the knowledge navigation based program; whereas the control group members were exposed to regular assessment. The pre and post scores of the experimental and control groups in the reading and writing skills test were statistically analyzed using T-test and the effect size was calculated. Also the satisfaction questionnaire was administered to the experimental qualitative data about the program. Both the quantitative and qualitative results showed that there were statistically significant differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups in the post measurement in favor of the experimental group students in the overall reading and writing skills and in each skill separately. Finally, it was concluded that knowledge navigation had a large effect on developing prep students' reading and writing skills. Key words: knowledge navigation – reading skills – writing skills – integrating reading and writing skills.