The Effect of Contextual Visual Aids on High School Students' Reading Comprehension

Abstract

The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of contextual visual aids on Iranian high school students’ reading comprehension. To do so, a thorough review of the related literature was done and a quasi-experimental study was designed in which the participants were 96 female EFL learners at the intermediate level. These participants were chosen out of 140 learners through a homogeneity test. The selected participants were assigned to four groups; three experimental groups (pre-thematic, thematic and post-thematic) and one control group. The participants went through the procedure of pretest, treatment, and posttest. The data was collected by means of three tests: a PET test, a pretest and a posttest of reading comprehension. A one-way ANOVA was run to probe the research questions posed in this study. The findings revealed that contextual visual aids had a statistically significant effect on Iranian high school students' reading comprehension. The study findings also revealed that among the Contextual Visual Aids, pre-thematic aids had the highest effect on high school students’ reading comprehension. This was followed by thematic visual aids which had a moderate effect on this process. However, the post-thematic visual aids had slightly significant effect on high school students' reading comprehension.