راهبرد استنباط در درک متن نوشتاری: شواهدی از دانشجویان فارسی زبان قوی و ضعیف در درک متن نوشتاری

محصول نهایی پردازشِ زبان به هنگامِ خواندن، درک‌ متن نوشتاری است که نیازمند تعامل هم‌زمان راهبردهای شناختی و فراشناختی است. استنباط، یکی از راهبردهای شناختی است که می‌توان آن ‌را در قالب توانایی بهره‌گیری از دو یا چند بخش از اطلاعات متن برای درک اطلاعاتی که به صورت ضمنی بیان‌شده تعریف کرد. هدف این پژوهش، بررسی تفاوت میان دانشجویان کارشناسی ارشد فارسی زبان با درک ‌متن نوشتاری ضعیف و قوی از جنبه کاربرد راهبرد استنباط بود. این مطالعه، پژوهشی شبه‌آزمایشی بود. نمونه آماری شامل 100 دانشجوی کارشناسی ارشد دانشگاه گیلان بود که به روش نمونه‌گیریِ در دسترس انتخاب شدند. نخست، همه آزمودنی‌ها در آزمون تعیین‌ سطح درک متن نوشتاری که روایی و پایایی آن در پژوهش‌های قبلی تایید شده بود، شرکت کردند تا دو گروه ضعیف و قوی در این زمینه مشخص شوند. در مرحلۀ پسین، آزمون استنباط محقق‌ساخته در میان آن‌ها توزیع شد. پس از اجرای این آزمون، داده‌ها با بهره‌گیری از آزمون تحلیل واریانس چندمتغیره و آزمون تی‌مستقل بررسی شدند. یافته‌ها، نشان‌ داد میان دانشجویان کارشناسی ارشد فارسی زبان با درک متن نوشتاری ضعیف و قوی از جنبه راهبرد استنباط تفاوت معناداری وجود دارد. به گونه‌ای‌که دانشجویان قوی از راهبردهای استنباطی بیشتری بهره می‌گرفتند. یافته‌های این پژوهش از جنبه نظری، به‌ عنوان یکی از نخستین پژوهش‌ها در زمینه کاربرد راهبرد استنباط در درک متن نوشتاری بزرگسالان باسواد فارسی زبان می‌تواند شکاف اطلاعاتی موجود در پیشینۀ پژوهش های مربوط در ایران را تا اندازه‌ای پُر کند.

Investigating the use of inferencemaking strategy in reading comprehension: Evidence from strong and weak Persian students in terms of reading comprehension

INTRODUCTIONThe ultimate goal of language processing while reading is the comprehension of written text, which requires the simultaneous interaction of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Inferencemaking is a cognitive strategy that could be defined as using two or more parts of the text information to enable comprehension of implicit information in the text. The cognitive strategies are operational plans used to process the text through words’ recognition, combining propositions to obtain the semantic structure of the text, and finally drawing a situation model of the affairs as presented in the text (Kintsch & Van Dijk, 1978). Inferencemaking is one of the cognitive strategies of reading comprehension, which could be defined as the ability to use two or more parts of the text information to get its implicates (Silagi, et.al. 2015, p. 8). An inference could be either simple like recognizing the reference of a pronoun, or so complex. In fact, it could be said that during the reading comprehension, the reader turns the sentences with a hidden and seemingly incoherent meaning into a coherent one using various inferences. Inference making is one of the main topics in psycholinguistic studies. From this perspective, it is a cognitive strategy through which the reader goes through the text to extract its implied meaning based on two sources of information, i.e., the propositional content of the text (the information explicitly stated) and the prior knowledge. Most of the information extracted from the text is not directly comprehensible through reading but is possible through inference making and text comprehension at high levels. Therefore, inference making helps to create a coherent representation of text by creating a conceptual relation between its different parts (Chikalanga, 1992, p. 699). Considering the above explanations, it could be said that the cognitive strategies enable the reader to activate his/her prior knowledge based on the text and to create a mental representation that facilitates reading comprehension. This mental representation should be enriched enough to provide a deeper understanding of the apparent meaning of the text. Such enrichment could be done through strategies, such as inference making as well as using the text structure’ knowledge. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the difference in the use of inferencemaking strategy (coherent and elaborative) in reading comprehension among the MA students with weak and strong reading comprehension abilities. Accordingly, in this research work, there was one main hypothesis and two subhypotheses.  MATERIALS AND METHODSThe study was a quasiexperimental type. The independent variables of this study were the participants’ level of reading comprehension (with both weak and strong levels) and the type of inference (with two levels of coherent and elaborative). The dependent variable was their score in the inferencemaking test.The research sample consisted of 100 MA Persian speaking students of the University of Guilan; they were selected by convenience sampling method. First, the researchermade placement test was conducted to divide the participants into two groups with weak and strong reading comprehension. The test’s validity and reliability have been confirmed in the previous study (Ghavami et al., 2020). In the next step, the researchermade inferencemaking test was distributed among them. This test consists of 4 texts and 16 questions. Each text has 4 questions, two of which are related to coherence inferencemaking and two are related to elaborative one. Then, five experts checked the content validity of the test. Its test’s reliability was computed using Cronbach’s alpha. The alpha coefficient of the test was 0.72, showing that the test has rather good reliability. Finally, data were analyzed using MANOVA and independent samples ttest.  RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONThe results showed a significant difference between MA students with weak and strong reading comprehension according to inferencemaking strategy, as the strong students use more inferencemaking strategies. More detailed analysis showed a significant difference between the graduate students with weak and strong reading comprehension regarding the coherent inference making and the elaborative one. 4.CONCLUSIONThe significant difference between the students with strong and weak reading comprehension (in terms of using the inference making strategy) and outperformance of the strong group compared to the weak group were consistent with the findings of Cain et al. (2001) and Silagi et al., (2015). The findings of this study, theoretically, as one of the first works in using inference making strategy in reading comprehension among literate Persianspeaking adults, could somehow fill in the informational gap in the related literature in Iran. From the educational point of view, the results of this research could provide valuable information on Persian Graduate students’ different inferencemaking strategies for those involved in higher education and planning, including instructors, educational psychologists, and curriculum developing experts.