The effects of language ability and engineering background knowledge on ESP reading ability of Thai graduate students, their test taking strategies and attitudes towards the test

Abstract

The objectives of this study were (1) to investigate the interaction effect between language ability, and engineering background knowledge on ESP reading ability, (2) to compare the ESP reading performance between high and low language ability groups, (3) to explore the effect of background knowledge on ESP reading performance, (4) to compare test taking strategies used among test takers in answering different kinds of test items and (5) to study test takers’ attitudes towards the test. The population was first-year graduate students from Engineering and non-Engineering faculties at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi of 2007 academic year. The samples consisted of 120 students from the population. They were assigned to two groups of high and low language ability. The instruments included the developed Engineering-English Reading Test (E-ERT), the KMUTT English placement test, an introspective interview and a test takers’ questionnaire. Two-way ANOVA was carried out to observe the effects of the two independent variables: language ability and engineering background knowledge. In addition, partial Eta squared was used to measure the effect size of the treatment. Frequency counts were employed to investigate test taking strategies. Descriptive statistics using mean score was carried out to reveal the test takers’ attitudes towards the test. The findings revealed that (1) there was no significant interaction effect between language ability and engineering background knowledge on ESP reading ability, (2) there was a significant difference between students with high language ability and low language ability, (3) there was a significant difference between students with engineering background knowledge and those without engineering background knowledge, (4) in general all the test takers employed the same test taking strategies in answering each kind of test item, but high language ability test takers used more strategies and used them more frequently than low language ability ones and (5) students had positive attitudes towards the developed test. The findings provide more insights into ESP reading assessment of graduate students in Thailand. In addition, English teachers as well as test writers can use the information to facilitate their ESP instructions and to develop more effective ESP reading tests for their institutions.