enhancement of iranian efl university students’ reading comprehension through explicit and implicit strategy instruction

The role of metacognitive processing in learning different language skills has been considered by scholars in the field of english language teaching. the present quasi-experimental study sought to investigate the effect of explicit and implicit strategy instruction on reading comprehension among iranian university students. a total of 119 male and female english as a foreign language (efl) university students aged 20-28, enrolled in three reading courses, were selected conveniently from a university in the central part of iran. the three classes were randomly assigned to two treatment groups: explicit group (n=37), implicit group (n=39), and control group (n=43). the experimental groups received treatment in the form of explicit and implicit strategy instruction while the control group followed the conventional course of instruction. two different validated reading comprehension tests were used to collect measures of reading ability, and some reading texts taken from diary of a wimpy kid: old school were used as the materials of the study. data analysis using anova showed that although the reading scores of both experimental groups improved from pretest to posttest, the explicit strategy instruction group outperformed the implicit group in reading comprehension. pedagogic implications stemming from the findings are discussed.