Learner's Gender, Reading Strategies, and Reading Performance in Expository and Argumentative Macro-genres

Abstract

This study investigated whether learners' gender could make differences in their reading comprehension and use of reading strategies in theexpository and argumentative macro-genres. To this end, six short macrogenre-based reading passages with the same readability indices and length were prepared from which appropriate reading tests were constructed and administered to a total of 50 EFL intermediate male (n = 21) and female (n = 29) students. This was followed by administrating reading strategies questionnaires to explore the learners' use of reading strategies in themacro-genres. Results of the study indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between male and female students' reading comprehension in the macrogenres. It was also shown that there was no significant difference between male and female learners in the overall use of reading strategies in the same macro-genres. The findings of the study hold implications for language teaching and testing, teacher training, and curriculum design.Key Words:gender,macro-genre,reading strategy,readingThe role of reading in man's life seems to be unquestionable. Reading skill has always been the focus of attention in instructing people and developing literacy among societies and it has been investigated in many different aspects (e.g., L1, L2, and ESP, reading styles, reading strategies, reading models). Such an important role along with the research findings has opened the eager and curious minds to work on new fields of the reading skill or to replicate the others' studies in new conditions and contexts to see if the same findings can be obtained. Learners' use of reading strategies in reading texts is one of the interesting topics on which many research studies have been conducted. Furthermore, the role of the learners' gender in reading comprehension, on the one hand, and their employment of reading strategies, on the other, seem to be interesting enough for language practitioners to study.Even more interesting are the learners' behaviors in understanding macro-genre-based reading texts like the argumentative and expository ones with respect to the employment of reading strategies and reading comprehension. Male and female learners may not behave similarly in understanding genre-based reading texts (e.g., argumentative, expository). Although these two types of macro-genres are used in the academic courses of language learners a lot, they are underrepresented in EFL/ESL literature. This study aims to explore the male and female learners' performances in comprehending the argumentative and expository macro-genre-based reading texts as well as their employment of reading strategies in these macro-genres.