Abstract:

Reading comprehension is one of the important skills that an individual must possess. This skill is an integral part of the individual’s life, an important determinant of the his/her academic success. It is observed that students who attend any school grades (e.g. from elementary to university) have difficulties in reading comprehension. In today’s information age, reading for getting information is one of the necessary behaviors. Today we have more chance to reach the informative texts compared to the past. As a result, it is required to make more research in order to understand these texts. The aim of this research is to carry out a teaching strategy that will help students to understand the informative texts, and enable them to check their understanding process. For this purpose, it is tried to revealed that the effect of “think before reading, think while reading, think after reading-TWA” teaching strategy, which is coordinated according to self regulated strategy development model, on reading comprehension skills of students. In the research pre test-post test quasi-experimental design is used. The research was conducted in 2015-2016 academic year in Bafra district of Samsun province. The sample of the research consisted of 68 students who were 32 students in experiment group, 36 students in control group. The instruction of informative texts were done in the experimental group with TWA strategy and in the control group with Turkish Language Teaching Program. In practice, 12 sessions were held and each sessions consisted of two hours. “Demographic Information Form”, “Reading Comprehension Test in Informative Texts” and “Main Idea Determination Test in Informative Texts” which were developed by researchers were used as data collection tool in the research. In the analysis of the data, Shapiro Wilk test to determine normal distribution, t-test to compare normal distribution groups, Mann-Whitney U test and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test to compare groups without normal distribution were used. Also, covariance analysis was used to compare the post test scores of the groups in the main idea test. In the research, it was found that teaching 3D strategy significantly increased the mean score of the experiment group, but did not make a significant difference when compared to the control group. Another finding in the research is that the 3D strategy significantly improves the mean score of the main idea determination. These findings show that 3D strategy instruction is not effective in increasing the level of reading comprehension, but is effective in increasing the level of main idea determination.

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