The Impact of Multimodal Discourse Analysis on the Improvement of Iraqi EFL Learners' Reading Comprehension Skill

Abstract

The present study was conducted to investigate the impact of multimodal discourse on Iraqi EFL learners' reading comprehension skill. To achieve the goal, a group including 40  Iraqi EFL learners participated in the free Reading Comprehension course based on their  scores in a Placement Test. Selected participants were randomly assigned to control (N=20)  and experimental (N=20) groups. Prior to the start of the course, both groups were given the pretest (reading comprehension test). The two groups received the same language instruction, but the experimental group was exposed to multimodal treatment (multimodal use of discourse, e.g. video and picture based on Halliday’s social semiotics approach) while the control one did not receive any multimodal treatment. Having accomplished the experiment, participants of the two groups completed two reading comprehension tasks as the posttest.  Results of t-test indicate significant outperformance of the experimental group over the control one.