THE IMPACT OF READING STRATEGIS' INSTRUCTION ON IRANIAN INTERMEDIATE EFL LEARNERS' READING COMPREHENSION PERFORMANCE

The present study investigated reading strategy use of Iranian college students learning English as a foreign language when they read reading comprehension texts in English. This study explored the relationship between the use of reading strategies and reading comprehension performance. In order to provide a homogeneous population to test if instruction of reading strategies has a significant effect on EFL learners reading comprehension performance, a population of 40 EFL learners were selected through an OPT test from among students of EFL program at Islamic Azad University of Tonekabon. So the study is conducted under a quasi-experimental design. From this population 20 intermediate students were selected as control group and 20 students as experimental group. Then a pretest was taken by two groups. Then the experimental group was exposed to reading strategies instruction for 10 sessions. The skimming and scanning strategies were two reading strategies which were selected for the purpose of treatment and when the students received efficient information about these reading strategies during 10 sessions of treatment the post test was given. Both groups were given the same post test and testees were asked to answer to 10 multiple-choice questions. Students in experimental group were expected to read the reading comprehension texts using the skimming and scanning strategies then answer the questions. Then using the spss software the scores of the two groups were analyzed through the t-test method and the t observed was calculated and compared with t critical. The results showed that The Iranian intermediate college students' reading comprehension performance was related to their reading strategy use; the more their reading comprehension performance, the more they utilized major reading strategies.