Abstract

This study aimed to introduce a systematic framework for the interactive instruction of reading based on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). To do so, 60 undergraduate TEFL students taking an advanced reading course were assigned to two equal groups. Both groups were pre-tested for their comparability, and then the experimental group was treated with SFL-oriented knowledge for 13 two-hour sessions with the control group just receiving the traditional grammar-oriented method of teaching reading. Following the treatment, a post-test was administered to both groups the results of which indicated that there was a significant difference at p < .05 in the performance of the two groups on reading comprehension. Detailed analyses revealed that the treated group had a better performance on understanding the lower-level intra-sentential relationships and higher-level contextual components involved in reading comprehension. It was concluded that the SFL-based teaching of reading comprehension had a great effect on the reading comprehension of Iranian TEFL students.

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