Abbas Badri Eyle Zoleh - English Teaching Department, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of pre-teaching vocabulary strategy on learners’ reading comprehension as a response to help-seeking strategy. To thispurpose, two intact groups (the number of each was 15) were chosen from 125 participants. They had a mean age of 16. They were divided into two groups, the experimental group andthe control group. Some written texts were taught to both groups. Unfamiliar words in thetexts were taught to the experimental group through Pre-teaching Vocabulary Words strategy. That is, before giving the learners silent reading phase, the researcher taught somekey words that he thought without them the learners’ comprehension would impede. Thecontrol group, on the other hand, had to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words or consult tothe dictionary in order to cope with the meaning of unfamiliar words. The results of the pretest and posttest in data analysis through statistical procedure of Independent pair T-test confirmed the superiority of the experimental group to the control group, resulting in theconclusion that Pre-teaching Vocabulary Words technique had a significant effect onimproving Iranian EFL learners reading comprehension. The findings support the arguments regarding the importance of Pre-teaching Vocabulary Words instruction to reduce thecognitive and linguistic complexity of the text and it helped learners to comprehend the textsbetter and to give them a sense of accomplishment. However, this technique is not something that used in real situation.

Pre-teaching Vocabulary Words, reading comprehension, help-seeking strategy