While theories of embodied cognition have been investigated in lab experiments with proficient readers, currently no studies have applied these theories to improving reading comprehension for low-proficiency readers. Using an embodied cognition approach, this study investigated producing comics as an embodied reading activity. To compare effects on English as a foreign language (EFL) reading comprehension of narrative texts, 71 low-proficiency tertiary EFL readers were randomly assigned to one of two collaborative post-reading activity groups: comics production or translation. Before the activities, the participants were given background knowledge instruction for the narrative texts. Reading comprehension was assessed by a true-false test, followed by a semi-structured focus group interview. The results show that the comics production group outperformed the translation group in reading comprehension. Moreover, evidence from interviews shows the comics production activity assisted low-proficiency EFL readers in constructing multimodal representations of what they read, improving the depth of their reading comprehension.
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Previous issue date: 2018-04
endingpage:
129
identifier.doi:
10125/66741
identifier.issn:
1539-0578
identifier.uri:
http://hdl.handle.net/10125/66741
number:
1
publisher:
University of Hawaii National Foreign Language Resource Center Center for Language & Technology
Works published here are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.