A Tailored Curriculum and Students’ General English Achievement across Gender
Subject Areas :
Bizhan
Hekmatshoar Tabari
1
(Department of English Language, Tonekabon Branch, Islamic Azaz University, Tonekabon, Iran)
Ramin
Rahimi
2
(Department of English Language, Tonekabon Branch, Islamic Azaz University, Tonekabon, Iran)
Mohammad Reza
Khodareza
3
(Department of English Language, Tonekabon Branch, Islamic Azaz University, Tonekabon, Iran)
Keywords: English for general purposes (EGP), needs analysis (NA), curriculum development, curriculum tailoring, curriculum evaluation,
Abstract :
The current study attempted to investigate the effect of a newly tailored curriculum on students’ general English achievement across gender as compared to the standard curriculum at Iranian tertiary education. The participants were 120 non-native undergraduate students of Pre-requisite General English course majoring in different disciplines at Ayandegan Institute of Higher Education in Tonekabon city. They were assigned into four groups including female control and experimental as well as male control and experimental. The experimental groups received teaching through the tailored curriculum and the control groups through the standard one. All the groups were given pretest and posttest on general English achievement. In order to analyze the data, a Kolmogrove-Smirnov test and an Independent Samples T-test were utilized. The findings of the study indicated female participant’s outperformance compared to the male ones, after being treated with tailored curriculum (TC) and standard curriculum (SC). However, the male participants experienced higher degree of progress after receiving TC as compared to SC, while such progress was not seen for the female.
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