The effect of using graphic organizers on Jordanian EFL tenth grade students' reading comprehension and their attitudes towards using them

الملخص EN

This study investigated the effect of using graphic organizers (semantic maps, concept maps and story maps) on Jordanian EFL tenth grade students’ reading comprehension and their attitudes towards using them.

the participants of the study were 83 females tenth grade students from two intact sections from Zainab bent al-Raoul basic school for girls.

one was assigned as a control group which was taught by the guidelines of the teacher's book, and the other as an experimental group, which was taught the graphic organizer based-instructional program.

teaching the instructional program lasted for twelve weeks during the second semester of the academic year 20162017-.

the instruments used to collect data were a pre-/post- reading comprehension test and an attitudinal scale.

the findings of the study showed that there were statistically significant differences (at α ≤ 0.05) between the students` performance on the reading comprehension test in favor of the students in the experimental group.

the improvement in the students’ reading comprehension could have been a result of using graphic organizers in teaching reading texts.

the students showed positive attitudes towards using graphic organizers in learning reading comprehension.

several recommendations were put forth for efl researchers and the ministry of education.