شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

The basic aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of fishbone strategy on the Iraqi EFL secondary students ' reading comprehension performance and self- efficacy perceptions. The total population is comprised of (75) female students in the 5th secondary stage – during the academic year 2015-2016. The chosen sample which consists of (62) female students is divided into two groups; the first group consists of (31) students to represent the experimental group and the second one consists of (31) students to represent the control group. The equalization of the individuals in both groups had been achieved by using certain variables such as (age, previous knowledge, and intelligence). Additionally, for the sake of equalizing the two groups and investigating the students’ capabilities in reading comprehension, a pre-test was administered before the beginning of the experiment. And students' performance on the pretest of the self- efficacy perceptions questionnaire has been taken into account. After conducting the experiment, the reading comprehension test and the self-efficacy perceptions questionnaire were read ministered to the two groups in order to discover any improvements in their reading comprehension performance and self-efficacy. Various statistical means were used to analyze the data collected such as means, standard deviations, percentages, t. Test, Pearson correlation coefficient, difficulty level and discrimination power, Cronbach alpha formula, Kuder Richardson (KR 20) formula, and Cohen’s D effect size and eta squared µ². The results are in favor of the experimental group which taught by fishbone instructional strategy. The effect of the fishbone strategy on the reading comprehension performance and self-efficacy perceptions of the experimental group students is large. Therefore, some recommendations are presented to use update strategies in teaching English as a foreign language and some suggestions for further studies are put forward. (Published abstract)