IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION OF IRANAN ENGLISH LEARNERS THROUGH FAIRCLOGH’S FRAMEWORK OF TEXT ANALYSIS

This study has been based on the premise that textual/intertextual awareness would result in a better comprehension of the reading passages. In better words, this study attempted to investigate the efficacy of intertextuality-aware instruction of passages inspired by Faircloughʹs (1992) framework of text analysis, for the text comprehension of intermediate EFL learners of both genders. First, the intertextuality deployed through the reading passages of the study’s course-book was focused in terms of genre, text type, vocabularies and structures as well as the reporting modes and intertextuality types. Moreover, 40 homogeneous female and male students were selected as the participants of the study in order to investigate the effect of intertextualty-aware instruction on their comprehension of reading passages. The findings indicated a significant difference between the performances of two groups on the final reading comprehension post-test in the way that experimental participants who experienced the study’s treatment performed remarkably better than their peers in the control group. Furthermore, it was found that gender was not a determining factor for intertextuality-aware instruction in the way that participants of both genders had more or less similar performance on the study’s post-test. The findings of this research imply that a qualified teacher of reading passages needs to be conscious regarding the role played by intertextuality in different texts in order to improve learnersʹ reading comprehension and help the learners to cope with the potential challenges the text imposes.