Teaching How to Improve Reading Comprehension: One Way of Increasing Iranian Students\' Scores on PIRLS

Teaching How to Improve Reading Comprehension: One Way of Increasing Iranian Students' Scores on PIRLS M. Najafi Paazoki, Ph.D. The performance of Iranian students on the international reading tests (PIRLS) is indicative of a major problem in reading comprehension. From a constructivist perspective, there are strategies that can be learned and used in order to improve reading comprehension. To this end, a short course was designed and implemented experimentally. Pre-tests and post-tests on reading comprehension, consisting of the latest tests used in PIRLS 2011, were given to both the experimental and control groups, each consisting of 70 female students selected randomly from among all 9-10 year-old girls in two districts in Tehran. Data analyses show that the experimental group's strategies and comprehension improved significantly. Therefore, with the use of such courses a better performance of Iranian students in the international arena can be achieved. Key words: text comprehension, educational intervention, constructivist model, inference, PIRLS