Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of pre-reading instruction in
comprehending English language texts. An experiment was designed and conducted to
investigate the significant difference between control and comparison groups. Four prereading activities (vocabulary definition, pre-questioning, brainstorming and providing
background knowledge) were used for the treatment. A pre-test and post-test reading
comprehension and vocabulary test, a questionnaire and classroom observations were
employed in the study to collect data. The pre and post-tests aimed at measuring reading
comprehension and vocabulary skills of the students. The subjects of the study were 104,
control group (n=52) and comparison group (n=52) of Grade 9 students and one English
teacher who taught the control group. To get a representative sample, random sampling
method that is lottery method was used for selecting the participants as a sample. After
the administration of the tests, the data were collected and subjected to statistical
analysis. An independent sample t-test was used to test the hypotheses in this study. The
test score of the two groups were analyzed using the SPSS version 16 statistical software
program. The major finding obtained from the statistical analysis shows that teaching
pre-reading activities had brought about a significant improvement between the pre-test
and post-test of the comparison group than the control group. Finally, the result of the
questionnaire and classroom observation showed that the classroom teacher did not
teach essential pre-reading activities which help to comprehend the text by activating the
students prior knowledge. It is recommended that English language teachers need to
teach pre-reading activities by activating students’ background knowledge to
comprehend the text
