EFL Learners’ Lexical Knowledge and Reading Comprehension: A ‎Case study of Pre-Intermediate EFL learners

The impact of learners’ lexical knowledge on their reading comprehension has always been a debatable challenge among EFL researchers and teachers. The present paper was presented to find out the impact of explicit lexical instruction on EFL learners reading comprehension. In do so, two intact classes at Kish institute in Tehran, each consisting of 15 pre-intermediate language learners were used. The two intact classes received a pretest. The test was adapted from Check Your English Vocabulary for PET book. The two groups received a 10 week treatment. Having finished the treatment, the participants received a posttest on reading comprehensions. Four weeks later, another posttest was administered to check for the learners’ retention of reading comprehension. To analyze the data a repeated measures one-way ANOVA was used, and it showed that there was a significant difference between the participants’ scores on the three tests. However, there was no significant difference between the participants’ scores on the second and the third posttest.  It could be strongly that explicit instruction of lexical phrases and vocabulary can significantly affect the learners’ reading comprehension and the retention of lexical expressions. The findings can have theoretical and practical implications for EFL teachers and learners.