The effect of the “complement story” language game on eleventh-grade EFL students’ reading skills

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the effect of the “complement story” language game on students’ reading skills at the senior high school level. Reading is a fundamental skill in English language learning that enables students to comprehend written texts, develop vocabulary, and construct meaning effectively. However, preliminary observations revealed that students experienced difficulties in reading comprehension due to monotonous teaching methods and limited opportunities for interactive reading practice. To address this issue, a quantitative approach using a pre-experimental one-group pretest–posttest design was employed. The participants of this study were eleventh-grade students selected through purposive sampling. Data were collected through a reading test administered before and after the implementation of the complement story language game. The pretest was conducted to measure students’ initial reading ability, while the posttest was used to evaluate their reading performance after the treatment. The findings showed that the mean score of students’ reading skills increased from 50.87 in the pretest to 70.43 in the posttest, indicating an improvement of 19.54%. The results of the statistical analysis demonstrated that the improvement was significant, confirming that the complement story language game had a positive effect on students’ reading skills. Therefore, the study concludes that the use of language games, particularly the complement story game, is an effective instructional strategy for enhancing students’ reading skills in English learning contexts.