The sustainability effects of two reading interventions on Saudi nursing students' comprehension of scientific research

Abstract

Background: Scientific literature is presented in complex language, most frequently in English, and includes technical jargon that represents a challenge to comprehension of an English as a foreign language (EFL) nursing student. Yet scientific literature is a powerful and trustworthy source of evidence to guide nursing practice.

Purpose: The aim is to examine two reading interventions (Translation vs Synthesization) and to determine which one produces long-term sustainability effects in scientific research reading comprehension.

Method: A two-group posttest-only randomized comparative design was used in which 120 participants were randomly assigned to two groups. Several instruments were used to collect the data.

Results: Study findings showed that the synthesization group significantly produced better results when compared with the translation group on both the immediate (p = 0.01) and the delayed (p = 0.013) reading comprehension tests. It shows also that gender differences have a significant impact on reading comprehension with a favor to males in the long-term reading comprehension outcome (p = 0.038) of synthesization and females in the short-term reading comprehension outcome (p = 0.015) of translation. English proficiency was significant with determination, metacognitive, and social skills in the synthesization group (p = 0.00, p = 0.01, p = 0.007 respectively).

Conclusion: The results suggested that synthesization could be an effective reading approach in improving EFL nursing students' reading comprehension of scientific literature.