The Impact of a Strategies-Based Instruction on Iranian EAP Students’ Reading Strategy Use: Developing Strategic EAP Readers

Abstract

Underperformance of students in EAP reading comprehension has been an issue of concern for teachers, syllabus designers, and curriculum developers in general and for EAP practitioners in particular. In spite of the fact that considerable efforts have been made to improve reading comprehension of students through strategies instruction over past decades, EAP students however have not benefited much from learning strategies. Thus, this study intended to investigate the impact of a Strategies-Based Instruction (SBI) on undergraduate students’ reading strategy use in an EAP context. Taking an instructional model from strategies taxonomy of Oxford (1990; 2001), it was assumed that in contrast to conventional EAP reading methods, SBI would be more effective in encouraging reading strategy use and as a result developing reading comprehension of EAP students through encouraging the use of effective strategies and skills. To do so, 80 freshman undergraduate students were chosen as the participants of this study who were in two intact classes. After administration of a pre-test, treatment (22 sessions, 2 sessions per week), and a post-test, the collected data was analyzed using t-test to examine the effect of the proposed method of instruction. The results of the analysis showed that the teaching intervention had a significant effect on students’ reading strategy use. The findings have implications for teachers encouraging effective reading comprehension instruction through the use of strategies in EAP teaching contexts.