The Effect of Critical Discourse Analysis Instruction on Iranian EFL Learners' Reading Comprehension and Orientation

Abstract

This study was planned to investigate the effect of explicit teaching of some Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) techniques on Iranian EFL learners' Reading Comprehension. It was attempted to explore any change in the students’ abilities in revealing the implied meaning of the texts. Any change in the students’ views toward learning English was also explored in this study after critical reading instruction through CDA techniques. To this end, two news articles were selected from online sources. The participants were 60 undergraduate students of Law at Bandar Anzali Azad University. They were assigned to two groups of 30 students. The experimental group were required to hand in a reflective essay on each reading article. They also responded to a questionnaire to reveal any change in their attitudes toward English language learning or any increase in their motivation to learn it. The results revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group after being instructed to read between lines through CDA. Their motivation also increased in learning English after becoming familiar with the field of CDA.

Keywords

• critical discourse analysis (CDA)
• critical reading
• CDA techniques
• reflective essay