The Effect of Teaching Critical Reading Strategies on EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Retention

Abstract

This study was an attempt to investigate whether teaching critical reading strategies had any significant effect on intermediate EFL learners' vocabulary retention. To fulfill the purpose of this study, 72 male and female students within the age range of 17 to 32 years studying at Farzan and Farzanegan language schools in Tehran at intermediate level were selected from a total number of 114 participants based on their performance on a piloted PET (2009) and a piloted teacher-made vocabulary recognition test and assigned to the experimental and control groups of 36 participants each. The same content (eight reading texts) was taught to both groups throughout the 19-session treatment with the only difference that the experimental group was taught critical reading strategies while in the control group the common comprehension-based approach was applied. At the end of the instruction, the piloted vocabulary retention post-test parallel to the vocabulary pre-test was administered to the participants of both groups after an interval of two weeks. Finally, the mean scores of both groups on the post-test were compared through an independent samples t-test which led to the rejection of the null hypothesis. Thus, teaching critical reading strategies proved to have a significant effect on intermediate EFL learners' vocabulary retention.