The Effect of Genre-Based Teaching on Iranian EFL Learners’ L2 Reading Comprehension

Abstract

This study was an attempt to determine whether a genre-based instruction improves the L2 reading comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. To this end, thirty homogenous Iranian BA Students studying English at Islamic Azad University, Bandar Abbas Branch were selected as the participants of the study using a version of TOEFL test. The selected participants were 15 females and 15 males who were randomly divided into two groups (an experimental group and a control group). Nevertheless, the experimental group and the control group took a reading-comprehension pretest followed by sixteen hours instruction, the experimental group using a genre-based pedagogy and the control group through the traditional methodology conventional in teaching reading comprehension. The two groups took the same test that they had taken as the pre-test, albeit this time as the posttest. In analyzing the data, the researchers utilized t-test for comparing the two groups. The results of the study showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the L2 reading comprehension of the participants who went under a genre-based instruction and who did not. Furthermore, the study investigated the role of gender which led to non-significant differences between the performances of the two genders.