The Effect of Read-Aloud Method on Iranian EFL Learners' Reading Comprehension

Abstract

One of the most important language skills affecting students' success in academic settings is reading comprehension and the ability to read fluently in a second language. Japanese EFL learners' less than satisfactory performance in standard English tests led Shinozuka, Mizusawa, and Shibata (2014) to design the read-aloud method. This study investigated the effectiveness of this newly designed method on Iranian EFL Learners' reading comprehension. The aforementioned method with its high priority on reading aloud enjoy four main activities: chunked reading practice, read-aloud practice, cloze test, and concurrent read-aloud and summarization. Participants of this study, selected through convenience sampling, were 140 undergraduate students whose English reading comprehension was considered poor based on the pretest. Then, the subjects were assigned in two groups of control (N=40) and experimental (N=100). The subjects in experimental group received 8 teaching sessions, while the control group received no specific training. Using a pretest-posttest design we attempted to see if read-aloud method turns of to affect our subjects' reading ability level. Therefore, some T-tests were run. The results of the statistical analyses demarcated that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in the posttest. The pedagogical implication of this study is that ESL/EFL instructors can implement the read-aloud method in their classes to promote their students' reading comprehension.