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چکیده
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The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of critical awareness in EFL learners’ reading comprehension. The design of the study was Nonrandomized Control Group, Pretest--Posttest Design(Ary et al., 2019). The participants of the study were 60 BA students majoring in English language teaching/literature at the University of Kurdistan, including 34 female and 26 male students. To ensure that the participants were similar in terms of their overall English proficiency level, Oxford Placement Test(OPT) was administered as the homogeneity test. Then, the participants were assigned to two groups as experimental and control based on their scores on (OPT). As the pilot test of the study and to check the appropriacy of the test of the study for the participants at this level of knowledge and expertise, Donald Trump’s inauguration speech transcript (www.washingtonpost.com) was delivered to a group of 20 BA students majoring in English language teaching at the University of Kurdistan to analyze it and respond to its questions which were designed by the researchers. As the pre-test of the study Donald Trump’s presidential announcement speech transcript (www.time.com) was delivered to the two groups to analyze it and respond to its reading comprehension questions that were designed by the researchers. The descriptive statistics of the participants’ scores on their pre-test showed that the participants’ mean scores were close across groups which means that the two groups were similar in terms of their reading proficiency level. After administering the pre-test, the control group were instructed based on traditional reading approach, while the experimental group were instructed based on critical awareness approach. Then, Donald Trump’s final presidential campaign speech transcript (www.politico.com) was delivered to the two groups as the post-test of the study. Despite the participants’ close mean scores on the pre-test across groups, their scores on the post-test following the instructions were obviously different. There was a slight improvement in the performance of the control group on the post-test, while it was evidently viewed that the performance of the experimental group improved substantially on their post-test in comparison with their performance on the pre-test. There was a significant difference between reading comprehension ability of students who received critical awareness instructions and the students who were instructed through traditional approach. Moreover, an attitude questionnaire was designed by the researchers and it was delivered to the participants in the experimental group to respond to it. With regards to the participants’ responses to the attitude questionnaire and the related descriptive statistics, it was concluded that the participants found critical awareness approach as an efficient approach for reading instruction. To investigate the effect of gender on the participants’ attitudes toward critical awareness approach, responses of the experimental group to the attitude questionnaire categorized by their gender were analyzed. The results revealed no significant difference between males and female students in any of the participants’ responses to the attitude questionnaire. Therefore, it could be concluded that gender might not have any effect resulting in differences in participants’ attitudes toward the study.
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