Impacts of multimedia gloss on Learning Reading Comprehension in ESL context

Abstract

With the expansion of education, and technology-mediated tools, the technology mediatedcourses are taking high response in teaching and learning by attracting learners' attention, particularly in the reading skills context. Henceforth, the current study’s objectives were to know the effects of multimedia glossing in helping engineering students reading comprehension and to know which multimedia features remained the strong factors in enhancing reading comprehension of the engineering students of Mehran UET Jamshoro, Pakistan. Two research tools were used to collect the data from 20 engineering students studying in the first-year first semester of engineering university in Pakistan, and an action research design was followed to accomplish the aim of the research. The sample of the study was selected through the judgment sampling technique. The data collected from the test and analysed on SPSS. The qualitative data collected through the semi-structured interview and analysed through thematic analysis. The findings of the study demonstrated that the employment of multimedia glossing in the ESL reading comprehension class proved useful which scaffolded the process of texts’ understanding effectively. In contrast, the audio feature remained the least effective in helping engineering students comprehending the information as compared to audio glossing and image multimedia features. Therefore, one of th suggestions of the research is for teachers and university administration is to plan a multimedia integrated lessons/ modules/ program with a proper guideline to conduct English language classes. Besides that, the university community should incorporate multimedia glossing according to the need of the learners, learning, and context in their lessons as it will let them visualize difficult abstract information without difficulty.