Exploring the Relationship between Reading Maturity, Reading Strategy Use, and Gender with Reading Comprehension of EFL Undergraduates in Iran

Abstract

This research investigated the relationship between reading maturity, reading strategy use, and gender with Iranian EFL undergraduates’ reading comprehension. The results revealed that the most preferred strategies were cognitive in nature. Moreover, the Iranian EFL undergraduates were intellectually enriched by most of what they read and enjoy reading materials that teach them the things that they did not know before. Also, it was found that the most observable effect of gender was on interpreting the text while reading, followed by reading the text again when some parts are difficult to understand. In both of these cognitive strategies, females outperformed the male students in using these two strategies. Furthermore, no correlation was observed between the most applicable reading strategy (b6: I read the text again when some parts are difficult to understand) and reading comprehension. What’s more, there was no correlation between reading maturity and reading comprehension. However, it was proved that there was a significant correlation between gender and reading comprehension. Reading maturity and the most applicable reading comprehension strategy (b6) had no significant correlation with reading comprehension as shown by the multiple regression results while gender revealed such a correlation. There was no significant correlation between the most applicable reading strategy (b6) and reading maturity. Furthermore, there was no relationship between gender and the mentioned reading maturity subgroups (c, d, e, and g) but gender correlated between subgroups f and h. At last, it was found that there was no relationship between gender and the most applicable reading strategy.