The Effect of Flipped Language Teaching on EFL Learners’ Text Comprehension: Learners’ English Proficiency Level in Focus

Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation

Shohreh Farsi ¹ , Masoud Zoghi ² , Hanieh Davatgari Asl ³

1 - Ph.D. Candidate, Department of ELT, Ahar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahar, Iran
2 - Assistant Professor of TESL, Department of ELT, Ahar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahar, Iran
3 - Assistant Professor of TEFL, Department of ELT, Ahar Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahar, Iran

Received: 2021-01-13 Accepted : 2021-01-13 Published : 2020-10-01

Keywords: flipped classroom, proficiency level, Flipped techniques, Text comprehension,

Abstract :

The current pretest-posttest quasi-experimental study sought, firstly, to examine the effect of employing flipped language teaching techniques on EFL learners' text comprehension and, secondly, to explore whether there was any significant interaction between the flipped classroom approach and EFL learners’ proficiency level. To this end, 65 male and female EFL learners were conveniently selected and their English proficiency level was determined based on the results of a TOEFL PBT. Having been divided into two experimental (one intermediate and one upper intermediate) and two control (one intermediate and one upper intermediate) groups, the participants were pretested in terms of reading comprehension at the beginning of the study. Subsequently, during a 14-week course of reading comprehension, the learners of the experimental group received flipped language instruction, whereas the control group’s learners were taught being exposed to conventional instruction. To investigate any changes in the learners’ per- formance as a result of the study course, their reading comprehension ability was gauged at the conclu- sion of the study course administering a posttest parallel to the pretest. The results indicated that the learners in the flipped classrooms outperformed their counterparts in the control group in terms of text comprehension, regardless of their English proficiency level. The findings of the study may urge EFL teachers to adopt a flipped classroom approach in order to enhance EFL learners’ reading comprehension skill.

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