The Effect of Motivating via Simplified Stories on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension Achievement

This study investigates the effect of employing simplified stories in EFL settings on reading comprehension ability of Iranian English language learners. They were divided into two groups of eighteen students. During a course of 10 sessions of 1.5 hours, one group received instructional reading-based textbook called “A basic course in English for university students” which was usually used for pre-university students in this university. The other group received short stories as the texts to be covered in their classrooms during the course .At the end of the course, a reading comprehension test composed of both the reading passages similar to the pre-university text book and pieces of short stories as reading comprehension texts were given to the participants. It was followed by a questionnaire which was also administered to the participants to tap their personal feelings towards these two types of text. The results were analyzed using T-tests. It was found that the group which received short stories as their reading text outperformed the other group.