The effect of literary vs. non-literary texts through critical reading approach on the reading comprehension development of Iranian intermediate EFL learners

Abstract

The present study aimed at investigating the effect of literary texts vs. non-literary texts through critical reading approach on the reading comprehension development of Iranian Intermediate EFL learners. To achieve this goal, the Preliminary English Test (PET) was employed to determine the homogeneity of the participants regarding their proficiency in English. A group of sixty students with scores one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean was selected as the participants of this study who were female learners and their language proficiency level was intermediate. In both groups the critical strategies are Answering Questions, Previewing, Making Predications, Reading between Lines, Analyzing, and Pair Discussion. The difference was that the subjects in the experimental group worked on short stories as literary texts through critical reading approach but the control group worked on journal articles as non-literary texts through critical reading approach. To determine whether there was any significant difference between the performance of experimental and control group ascribed to treatment, a reading comprehension test as post test was administered. After the data were processed, the results showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups. Thus, the null-hypothesis, saying literary vs. non-literary texts through critical reading approach has no significant effect on the reading comprehension development of Iranian intermediate EFL learners, was rejected. © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.