Lexical inferencing strategies affecting Iranian EFL learners comprehension of English proverbs

The purpose of the present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of four different forms of strategy instruction on the comprehension of English proverbs. To this end, 120 female intermediate-level students were selected and randomly put into five experimental and control groups. The four experimental groups were taught four lexical inferencing strategies including form-focused, monitoring, evaluating, and meaning-focused strategies while the students in the control group received no instruction. After 12 sessions of treatment, a posttest of English proverbs was administered to all the participants. The collected data were analyzed using a one-way ANOVA procedure. The results revealed that all the four experimental groups significantly outperformed the control group. In addition, the meaning-focused group performed significantly better than the evaluating, monitoring, and form-focused groups. The findings suggested that meaning-focused strategies can be used as an effective instructional tool to help learners improve their comprehension of English proverbs.