Authors : Gholam Reza Zarei and Mohammad Ali Esfandiari
Abstract: The present study aimed at investigating students` learning outcomes in a general English course which involved studying different texts of reading comprehension. They were first controlled for their homogeneity by a standard TOEFL test and randomly assigned to two classes; one constructivist and the other conventional. Both groups (n = 30) studied the textbook named "A General English Course for the University Students" written by Dr. Farhadi. In the constructivist group students were encouraged to work collaboratively in order to build their knowledge, while in the conventional group the knowledge was transferred to the students directly by the teacher. Also, the participants in both groups were given a pre-test and a Post-test of cloze and multiple choice item of reading comprehension. The analysis of results showed that constructivist group outperformed their conventional counterparts on the cloze test. In contrast, the conventional group outweighed their friends on multiple choice test of reading comprehension. It is concluded that students` performance on different tests is directly related to the methodology by which they are taught.
Gholam Reza Zarei and Mohammad Ali Esfandiari , 2008. The Effect of Constructivist vs. Conventional Teaching on Reading Comprehension. The Social Sciences, 3: 606-610.