Volume 2022, Issue 1 2082982
Research Article
Open Access

Correlation and Prediction of Students’ Level of Reading Comprehension through Their Perception of the Application of Transition Words

Md. Nurul Anwar

Md. Nurul Anwar

English Language Institute, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, United International University, Madani Avenue, United City, Dhaka 1212, Bangladesh uiu.ac.bd

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Md. Nurul Ahad

Md. Nurul Ahad

Department of English, University of Asia Pacific, Dhaka, Bangladesh uap-bd.edu

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Choiril Anwar

Choiril Anwar

English Education Study Program, Universitas Islam Sultan Agung, Semarang, Indonesia unissula.ac.id

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Hani Qasem Mohammed Asaad

Hani Qasem Mohammed Asaad

School of Languages, Civilisation and Philosophy, UUM College of Arts and Sciences, 06010 UUM, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Kedah Darul Aman, Malaysia uum.edu.my

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Md. Kamrul Hasan

Corresponding Author

Md. Kamrul Hasan

English Language Institute, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, United International University, United City, Madani Avenue, Badda, Dhaka 1212, Bangladesh uiu.ac.bd

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Boonyarit Omanee

Boonyarit Omanee

Foreign Languages Department, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Rajamangala University of Technology Srivijaya, 1 Ratchadamnoennok Rd, Boyang Sub-district, Muang District, Songkhla, Thailand rmutsv.ac.th

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First published: 03 October 2022
Academic Editor: Mehdi Nasri

Abstract

The role of reading comprehension and its correlation and prediction to other skills in terms of enhancing the proficiency level of students in English language has been widely recognized by researchers. However, research conducted on reading comprehension in roughly the last fifteen to twenty years shows no concrete evidence of identifying the knowledge of the transition words with the understanding of reading comprehension. This study was particularly designed to fill that gap and to measure students’ ability to differentiate among various categories of expressions in English language, such as descriptive, narrative, sequence, comparison and contrast, and cause and effect, and to identity the functions of their derivative transitions in the reading comprehension task. The current study adapted a quantitative method and collected data from 100 male and female EFL students at the tertiary level in a Bangladeshi university to conduct this study. To be specific, this research used transition words as the predictor variable/independent variable and reading comprehension as the dependent variable. The findings of the research suggested that there were positive and significant correlations between students’ knowledge of the transition words and their level of understanding the reading comprehension. In addition, the transitional word was found to be a strong predictor of reading comprehension. This study strongly suggests that students with a better understanding of transition words can perform equally better in their reading comprehension tasks. For tertiary level students, the knowledge of transitional words would be useful, and it would also have significance for lexical scholars and curriculum designers.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest.

Data Availability

The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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