Effects of Using Cognitive Tasks (Opinion gap and Reasoning gap) ‎On Iranian EFL Learners’ Reading and Vocabulary Abilities

Recently, a number of approaches have been presented to teaching reading skill and vocabulary development. One of the most influential methods is utilizing the tasks, especially cognitive tasks in education. The current study was an attempt to investigate the effect of cognitive tasks, namely, opinion and reasoning, on developing reading ability and vocabulary knowledge of Iranian EFL learners. In such doing, 90 EFL participants were selected out of 112 ones. Then, they were divided into three equal groups (two experimental and one control). One of the experimental groups received vocabulary instruction and the other one reading instruction through cognitive and reasoning gap tasks for eight sessions. Independent sample t-test and one-way ANOVA were run to analyses the data. The findings revealed that cognitive tasks had a significant effect on reading comprehension and vocabulary development of EFL learners. However, the respective TBI (i.e. opinion and reasoning gap task types) proved to be more significant in developing vocabulary knowledge than reading comprehension.