The Effect of Explicit Teaching of Textual Metadiscourse on ESAP Reading Comprehension Performance of Iranian University Students

The present study attempted the relative effect of explicit teaching of textual metadiscourse markers on ESAP reading comprehension performance of Iranian university students through an awareness raising experiment. A sixty-item multiple choice ESAP reading comprehension test of accounting was developed and validated to act as the pre-test and post-test. The test included items for assessing specific comprehension of students in their specialist subject. The test was administered to 80 undergraduate intermediate and upper-intermediate students randomly assigned to experimental and control groups as the pre-test. After the treatment was over, the English for Specific Academic Purposes test was again given to the same students as the post-test. The results of the two-way ANOVA indicated that the experimental group benefited from the explicit teaching of textual metadiscourse markers and the treatment had a facilitative effect on ESAP reading comprehension of students. Moreover, the results of the two-way ANOVA showed that the proficiency level had an effect on ESAP reading comprehension of the students, that is upper-intermediate level students in the experimental group benefited more from the explicit teaching of textual metadiscourse markers. The overall results of the study provide empirical support for the facilitative effect of explicit teaching of textual metadiscourse markers on ESAP reading comprehension of students.