Improving Iranian High School Students' Reading Comprehension Using the Tenets of Genre Analysis

Abstract

This study is an attempt to investigate impact of using a technique, namely, genre-based approach on improving reading ability on Iranian EFL learners' achievement. Therefore, an attempt was made to compare genre-based approach to teaching reading with traditional approaches. For achieving this purpose, by administering the Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT) 80 female EFL learners were chosen. We assigned the participants to an experimental and a control group randomly. A reading test was administered on the whole population as the pretest. 10 reading passages were taught using the tenets of genre based instruction, while the same reading passages were taught to the participants in the control group traditionally. After 10 sessions of instruction when all the passages were taught, the participants sat for a posttest. The research hypothesis according to which using genre-based approach to teaching reading does not significantly improve reading ability of Iranian EFL learners was rejected at 0.05 level of significance. Differently stated, using genre-based approach to teach reading can improve EFL learners’ performance in their reading classes. The result also showed that there is a meaningful difference between the performance of students who go under a traditional approach in teaching reading comprehension and those who are instructed using genre-based approach. The outcomes of this study can be used by English language teachers to consider the importance of a genre-based instruction.

Keywords: Genre-Based Instruction (GBI), Reading comprehension, Iranian EFL learners, Reading comprehension