Impact of Explicit Instruction of Strategic Thinking on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension and L2 Lexical Growth

This research was an attempt to explore the effect of explicit instruction of strategic thinking on L2 reading comprehension and L2 lexical growth used by sixty Iranian EFL learners in Farrokhshar. The present study aimed to find out the impact of strategies on L2 reading comprehension and L2 lexical growth, and answer whether strategic thinking improved learners’ reading comprehension and developed their L2 lexical. A total of 71 intermediate EFL learners in a private institute in Farrokhshar participated in this study. To this end, 60 female Iranian intermediate EFL learners were selected based on their performance on a quick placement test (QPT). The participants were divided into two groups, experimental and control groups. Before and after treatment, the participants received a pretest and a posttest. The experimental group received explicit instruction of strategic thinking while control group was taught traditionally. The results showed a statistically significant difference between the performance of the two groups. The results of independent-samples t-test and paired samples t-test indicated that the group of learners who learned strategic thinking explicitly improved in terms of their reading comprehension and L2 lexical growth. In addition, a Likert scale survey was administered to investigate the students’ attitudes toward learning strategies. The general attitude of both groups about learning strategies was positive and the participants expressed that learning strategic thinking would raise their language proficiency level