The Comparative Impact of Information Gap Tasks on the Reading Comprehension of Iranian Impulsive and Reflective EFL Learners
Subject Areas : Journal of Teaching English Language Studies
Mehrdad Rezaee
1
,
Mohammad Iman Askari
2
1 - Department of English Language, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Department of English Language, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
Keywords: Information gap, Reflective, Impulsive, EFL learners,
Abstract :
The study was an attempt to investigate the comparative effect of Information Gap Tasks on Impulsive and Reflective EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension. 60 male and female EFL learners were selected out of an initial 100 intermediate learners based on their performance on a piloted of PET test took part in the study. The participants were divided into two homogenous groups in terms of language proficiency with 25 reflective and 35 impulsive learners in each. These two groups were randomly assigned as the impulsive and reflective learners based on the result of Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised. All the participants in two groups received a teacher-made multiple-choice test of reading comprehension which was administered at the outset. The learners in the two instructional groups received the same test as the posttest. Both groups were taught by the same teacher and they used the same course book. They received the same hours of instruction and teaching aids in the same physical environment; therefore, the most significant point of departure in the two experimental groups in the present study was their personality style. The findings of this study revealed that the participants’ reading comprehension improved significantly among the reflective group compared to the impulsive group. Meanwhile, the more reflective EFL learners were, the more meta-cognitively aware they were of reading strategy use.Reflective learners reported a significantly higher reading scores compared to the impulsive learners following the instruction. The findings could be used by EFL teachers and syllabus designers to develop efficient vocabulary teaching procedures.
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