The Influence of Concept Mapping on Reading Comprehension of Iranian English Students Employing Persuasive and Descriptive Texts

Reading is considered as one of the complex skills in EFL context. Comprehension is the understanding of what is read. To be able to understand written material, learners need to use congenial strategies and have sufficient vocabulary. The present study intended to investigate the influence of concept mapping on reading comprehension of EFL learners employing persuasive and descriptive texts. A language proficiency test was administered to 70 EFL learners, among whom 52 learners were selected as the participants of the study. They were randomly assigned in four groups: two control groups and two experimental groups. Before any instruction the researcher administered a pre test. Then, learners in two experimental groups received treatment of concept mapping as reading comprehension texts while learners in two control groups received no treatment of concept mapping. The results of pre test and posttest were analyzed by SPSS soft ware using one way ANOVA statistical procedure. After analyzing the post test scores, the results indicated that the learners in two experimental groups outperformed the learners in two control groups in reading comprehension. This study also showed that semantic mapping has different effect across types of texts. Learners who received persuasive text performed well than who received descriptive text.