The Effect of Collocation Teaching on Reading Comprehension of Advanced EFL Learners in Iran

The current study tried to address whether explicit collocation teaching has a positive effect on reading comprehension compared to explicit single-item vocabulary instruction. Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKL) and vocabulary pretest were used to determine prior knowledge of EFL students at Payam e Noor University in Behshar, Iran. Of the two treatment groups one received explicit collocation teaching and the other received single-item vocabulary instruction followed by a reading passage (Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 28). Five of the six reading comprehension questions aimed to elicit the target collocations in the answers. The two-tailed t-test significance values were higher than 0.05 for all the questions (q1: 1,000; q2: 0,64; q3: 0,39; q4: 0,106; q5: 0,768), and yet indicated differences between participant means were likely due to chance and not likely due to the difference in treatment types (single-item vocabulary instruction and collocation instruction). The inconclusive findings could be due to only one treatment session