THE ROLE OF ELECTRONIC SHORT STORIES IN ENHANCING STUDENTS' LEXICAL COMPETENCE IN READING COMPREHENSION SKILL

This study aims to underline the role of literature, specifically e-learning short stories, in enhancing reading comprehension skill among First-Level students of English at the Faculty of Education of Saber, University of Aden. The research study mainly focuses on students' lexical competence. The study is specifically conducted to identify the underlying problems faced by students who experience difficulties in comprehending reading texts. For this reason, the researcher gave a brief outline of the objective, hypothesis, and question. The researcher besides implemented a quasi-experiment, and through a purposive (non-random) sampling she adopted a causal-comparative design where she divided a sample of (41) into two groups: A control group of (20) subjects, and an experimental group of (21) subjects. In a same manner, the researcher utilized four instruments as follows: A pre-paper pencil test, a select number of short stories, What's Application group activities, and a post-paper pencil test. Each instrument is designed to serve the research purpose. The experiment lasted for a period of (10) weeks where the researcher committed herself to meet her subjects two days per week through What's Application. The study in accordance with the objective, hypothesis, and research question adopted the statistical value of (0.05) to affirm the significant level of difference between the two groups, and hence interpreted the data collected by means of Mann-Whitney U Test (SPSS, version 28). The study demonstrated two main results: a) E-learning short stories proved gradual development of students' lexical competence. b) E-learning short stories played an effective role in the reading comprehension skills of students.