The Effect of Types of Semantic Mapping Strategy Instruction on the Reading Comprehension of Iranian Intermediate EFL Students

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of two types of semantic mapping strategies (teacher-student interactive semantic mapping strategy and teacher-initiated semantic mapping strategy) on reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate EFL students. The participants of this study were 144 female students at Qazvin Kish-Mehr Language Institute. The instruments used in this study were a Nelson test and a teacher-made reading comprehension test. The latter was utilized in this study at pre-test and post-test phases. The materials consisted of four reading passages. Having established the homogeneity of the students in terms of general language proficiency, 90 students were selected and divided into three groups: one comparison and two experimental groups. During the four instructional sessions, one experimental group received teacher-student interactive semantic mapping strategy instruction, while the other experimental group received teacher-initiated semantic mapping strategy instruction. In the comparison group, however, students were not instructed to use any semantic mapping strategy. Rather, they were instructed to read intensively. At the end of the experiment, the post-test was administered to all groups in the study. In order to carry out the statistical analyses of the study the following techniques were used. To ensure the homogeneity of the groups, a one way ANOVA was used. To investigate the effects of the strategies, another one way ANOVA was run. The results indicated that semantic mapping has a significant impact on the improvement of reading comprehension ability of Iranian intermediate EFL students. The findings of this study may encourage syllabus designers and textbook writers to embody sections related to semantic maps into the materials they develop.