Enhancing EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension through Explicit Instruction of Formulaic Language – An Experimental Study

The current quantitative study investigated effects of formulaic language (FcL) explicit instruction on Moroccan EFL learners' reading comprehension.It followed an experimental design with a pretest, treatment, and posttest.The main body of participants in this study was composed of 84 intermediate EFL high school students.They were exposed to ten-week intervention sessions through which they received explicit instruction of 40 formulaic sequences.The treatment group was exposed to an explicit form of instruction, while the control group received more implicit communicative form of teaching.The results from the paired samples t-test showed that the learners in both study conditions made significant gains in reading comprehension; however, the independent samples t-test could not reveal any statistically significant difference between the two study conditions.The current study shed light on the effects of FcL explicit instruction on English language learning and its benefits, especially in EFL settings.