The Impact of Content – Based Instruction (CBI) on Iranian High school Students’ Reading Comprehension

Iranian High school students have usually indicated poor performance on the reading comprehension of texts. Prompted by this idea, we aimed to investigate the effect of teaching content-based instruction (CBI) vs. Grammar Translation Method (GTM) on students’ reading comprehension. The population of this study included all the third year high school female students who were all seventeen years old. They were chosen randomly from among the students of Fatima Zahra high school, majoring in mathematics, science, and the humanities. They were randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. Reading comprehension test (pre-test) was administrated to all participants to determine the participants’ reading proficiency at the beginning of the study. During the treatment, reading comprehension was taught to the participants of the control group based on the principles of GTM, while the participants of the experimental group received reading comprehension through CBI method. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative methods to obtain information about the students’ perceived use of content-based instruction (CBI) as well as their reading comprehension level. The independent sample t-test, ANOVA, and questionnaire techniques were used to examine the participants’ perception of CBI, and the effect of CBI on reading comprehension. Results indicated that the utilization of CBI could enhance the students’ reading comprehension. Questionnaire results supported the experimental findings by providing some themes. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.