The Effect of Textual Cohesive Reference Instruction on the Reading Comprehension of Iranian EFL Students

Abstract

 This study aimed to investigate the effect of textual cohesive reference instruction on the reading comprehension of Iranian EFL students. To do so, about 60 students at advanced level participated in this study. The researcher divided them into two groups: control group and experimental group (30 students in each class). The control group received placebo (without useful instruction about cohesive references), but experimental group received treatment (textual cohesive reference instruction). The researcher’s subjects were collected from Islamic Azad university of Rasht, Iran. They were studying English as a foreign language (B.A).The age average amongst them was 23 to 26. Also as the level of our instruction and by the help of test-retest analysis it was proved that these subjects can do that kind of test and instruction. In order to investigate the effect of textual cohesive reference on the reading comprehension of Iranian EFL students, the results of the pre and post tests were used to gain the mean and standard deviation. Finally with the help of our experimental study this research led to the conclusion that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the two groups allowing the researchers to reject the null hypothesis with more than 95% confidence.