The effect of inter-cultural background knowledge on Iranian learners' reading skills

Subject Areas : Research in Curriculum Planning

Farhad Ghorbandordinejad ¹ , Zahra Bayat ²

1 - 1استادیار گروه زبان انگلیسی دانشگاه شهید رجایی، تهران، ایران
2 - 2کارشناس ارشد رشته آموزش زبان انگلیسی، دانشگاه شهید رجایی، تهران، ایران

Received: 2017-10-17 Accepted : 2017-10-17 Published : 2016-06-21

Keywords: Students, inter-cultural background knowledge, mental design, culture, Reading,

Abstract :

The recent research was considered the effect of inter-cultural background knowledge on Iranian learners' reading skills. The population included all the girls’ students (5000 students) in Sabzevar English Institutes. By using simple probability sampling 60 girls’ students selected by Morgan’s random numbers. The research instruments included Nelson placement pretest (Flower and Coe, 1976), five reading texts about cultural topics to do during the experiment term and a research- made reading posttest as a main posttest. The posttest reliability was determined 82% by Cranach alpha and its validity was confirmed by English teaching professors. Independent T test and MANOVA variance analysis were used by using SPSS 19. The research results showed that the meaningful effect of inter-cultural background knowledge ( t(58)= -8.511) p˂0.08) in the students’ reading. Knowing about some sub-cultures in English language countries like etiquette and keeping pet have a meaningful effect on reading texts related to sub- cultures and finally the inter-cultural background knowledge from the English languages holidays was considered in the next level.

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