Abstract: This research presents an empirical study on the program comprehension and debugging processes of novice programmers. We provide empirical evidence that the increase exposure to a large number of quality code modification and adaptation in formal teaching is a viable technique for novices to learn program debugging but not for program comprehension. The empirical study is based on case studies at one of the Malaysian universities among the first-degree Information Technology programs students taking Java Programming, an elective programming course. We design a quasi-experiment with non-randomized quota sampling control group with pre-test-post-test. This experiment looks into the program comprehension and debugging constructs at the micro level. Code segments in Java programming language between 5-25 lines of codes are given for the students to try to comprehend or debug manually with pen and paper within a specific timeframe. It will form part of the normal assessment tests for the course. The pre-test involve correct code while the post-test involve both correct and (logical and run-time) bugged code. A control group of 80 students and a treated group of 24 students form the non-randomized quota samples.