the effects of teaching lexical networks on reading comprehension of foreign persian language learners

this study deals with teaching the verbal meaning networks in second/foreign language, and evaluates the effects of this kind of teaching on the learning process of foreign persian language learners. for this purpose, a pretest was carried out among 50 foreign language learners, from which 30 individuals were selected for this research based on their scores. the subjects were divided into two groups (control and experimental), and were taught using two explicit and implicit teaching methods. the selected subjects in both groups, with the advanced language proficiency level, were given 27 verbs which were presented with their semantic lexical networks. the control group was given lessons without a direct reference to the subject of networks, while the experimental group was taught with awareness of that subject and, in addition to providing the meanings of the verbs in the margins of the lessons, some techniques such as showing the verbs in a color coded way and making the verbs in bold were used too. after each lesson, a quiz was carried out among the learners and the results of both groups’ test were compared using statistical methods. comparing and analyzing these results through the t-test indicated that the experimental group considerably outperformed the control group.