The Impact of Read-Aloud Method on Reading Comprehension and Motivation: The Case of Iranian EFL Learners

Reading skill and reading comprehension in a second language is a very important skill affecting students success in academic settings. Poor English performance among Japanese EFL learners led Shinozuka, Mizusawa, and Shibata (2014) to design the read-aloud instruction package. The present study investigated the effectiveness of this newly designed method to the improvement of Iranian EFL Learners reading comprehension as well as their motivation. The aforementioned method consists of four major activities: Slash/chunked reading practice, repeated read-aloud practice, cloze test, and simultaneous read-aloud and write-out practice. Participants of this research were 119 undergraduate students whose English reading comprehension was considered as Low based on the pretest. The subjects were divided into two groups. Group 1 served as the experimental group (N=84) and received 8 teaching sessions, and group 2 served as the control group (N=35). Using a pretest posttest design we attempted to see if read-aloud method turns out to affect participants reading comprehension and motivation. Therefore, T-tests were conducted. The results of the statistical analysis demarcated that the experimental group outperformed the control group in the posttest. That is to say, not only the reading comprehension of participants who had received an intensive instruction improved, but also after the treatment they had a more positive orientation toward reading in general and toward the method in particular. The pedagogical implication of this research is that ESL/EFL instructors can implement the read-aloud instruction package in their classes to improve their students reading comprehension and motivation.

Keywords:

Cloze test , Motivation , Reading comprehension , Read-aloud method , repeated read-aloud practice , Simultaneous read-aloud and write-out practice , chunked reading