Perceptions of English Language Learners about Teaching of Reading Comprehension Skills: A View of Task-based Language Teaching Method

The present research was an endeavor to determine whether or not the adoption of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) can be an effective means of increasing the students’ reading comprehension ability. Also, this paper explored the students' views towards the mentioned method. To fulfil the purposes of the study, a mixed method research was employed and 80 advanced EFL learners of university participated in the study that were assigned randomly to the experimental and control groups. Having instructed the two groups with the same texts but different methods of teaching during a term, the learners’ reading performance results were compared through administering a reading posttest to both groups. The researchers in the control group class followed her regular teaching practice through the conventional book-based method, but, she applied task based method in three stages in the experimental group class.  The obtained data were analyzed using t-test to examine the effectiveness of TBLT method as on students’ reading performance. Moreover, the students' views of the experimental group were investigated through related questionnaire and interview. The findings revealed that the experimental group remarkably performed better than the control group. Therefore, TBLT had a significant effect on learners’ reading performance compared to traditional reading instruction. On top of that, findings of the interviews and questionnaires demonstrated the participants' satisfaction with implementing TBLT method, and also revealed that they had positive views towards it.