International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

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Text Structure Awareness among International Students

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The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ awareness on text structure. The text structures in focus are compare/contrast and cause/effect expository texts via responses to a 14 items questionnaire. Sixty six intermediate and advance level Iranian international students at a Malaysian university were assigned to respond to the questionnaire. Results from the analysis indicate that both groups demonstrated an average level of text structure awareness. Although there are not huge differences between advanced and intermediate students in their text structure awareness, the advanced students indicated preferences in reading specific text structure and demonstrated more awareness on text structure. Findings of this study could provide significant insights for both teachers and students to identify how different reading texts can be organized in terms of level of difficulty.
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