THE EFFECT OF TEACHING CULTURAL CONTENT ON IRANIAN INTERMEDIATE EFL LEARNERS’ READING COMPREHENSION ABILITY

The purpose of the current investigation is to look into the influence of teaching cultural content on the Iranian intermediate EFL (English as a foreign language) learner s reading comprehension. Actually, the study aims to investigate the extent to which teaching cultural content can help the students successfully overcome their reading comprehension concerns. 60 Iranian intermediate EFL students who were members of Shokouh language institute in Motelqu, Mazandaran participated in the investigation. The research made use of a quasi-experimental, pretest-posttest control group design. An Oxford Placement Test was utilized to specify a homogenous sample. Afterward, the participants took the reading comprehension pre-test to check their initial reading comprehension ability. During a six-week treatment period, both control and treatment groups received the same routine lesson plan of the institute, but only the treatment group enjoyed the culture instruction to test its impact on the reading comprehension improvement. At the final stage, the students took the post-test to check their reading comprehension ability after the treatment period. The outcomes of the investigation demonstrated that receiving cultural content teaching improved the learners’ reading comprehension. Generally, the experimental results of the current inquiry support the effectiveness of teaching cultural content on the EFL students reading comprehension

Keywords:

reading comprehension , culture , foreign language learning