THE IMPACT OF KWL STRATEGY ON COLLEGE EFL STUDENTS' READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT

Abstract

Iraqi EFL learners face difficulties in comprehending English language reading texts. It is well-established that the teaching strategies focusing on the nature of reading comprehension process are more effective than traditional methods when seeking to achieve a better comprehension of foreign language texts. This study investigates the impact of the KWL strategy on the college EFL students' reading comprehension achievement. KWL (Ogle, 1986) is an instructional reading method utilized to guide students while reading a text. Students brainstorm the whole thing they Know about a topic. This information is written down in the K column of a K-W-L chart. A list of questions about what they Want to Know about the topic is then developed. These questions are set out in the W column of the chart. During or after reading, students answer the questions that are in the W column. This new information that they have Learned is recorded in the L column of the K-W-L chart. To achieve the aim of this study, a sample selected randomly from the first-grade students, the department of English, Al-Imam Al-Kadhum Private University College, Misan, Iraq. Ninety-two males and females participated in the study and were distributed equally to an experimental group and a control group. Both groups were pretested to determine their achievement level and make sure that they are homogenous. The students in the experimental group were taught reading comprehension by the K.W.L strategy, while the control group were taught by a conventional method. Pre- and post-reading comprehension tests were managed to collect data. The data were analyzed using a two-sample t-test. The findings reveal the superiority of the experimental group students in the reading comprehension post-test over their peers in the control group. Therefore, the strategy can be beneficial for students’ reading comprehension. This study is a call for teachers to utilize new strategies and techniques for teaching reading compr