Task-based Language Teaching and Its Effect on Medical Students’ Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Developing reading comprehension skills is a significant requirement for medical students to communicate with other students and experts in the field. In Iranian EFL context, English is an obligatory course offered in all universities with an emphasis on the reading skill. The most widely applied teaching method in Iranian EFL classrooms is Grammar Translation Method with the result that many students still facing difficulties in reading English materials. With the growing interest in Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), the present quasi-experimental study aimed at investigating the effect of using this method in improving the reading comprehension skill of medical students. It also aimed to examine whether gender makes a difference in this regard. To these ends, 60 intermediate students comprising 30 males and 30 females studying at the Guilan University of Medical science were randomly divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group (n=30) received task-based instruction (TBI) based on Willis and Willis' (2007) framework, while the control group was taught using the conventional GTM. Results of independent samples t-test at the alpha level of .05 revealed that TBLT was useful in enhancing the participants' reading comprehension. Paired-samples t-test also demonstrated that both groups progressed after the experiment. Finally, it was found that there was not any difference between males and females who either received TBI or GTM. These findings confirm the usefulness of tasks as valid tools which can be applied to teach reading to medical students.