Reading comprehension is a difficult skill for foreign language learners to develop. In choosing suitable reading comprehension activities, different forms of activities can be provided to increase learners’ comprehension. Pre-reading activities are some preliminary activities acquainting students with the topic of reading and activating their background knowledge on the content. This study investigated the effects of two pre-reading activities, pre-teaching vocabulary and pre-questioning as participating in a discussion about the topic of reading before going through the text on learners’ overall reading ability, and there is an investigation between the two types of pre-reading activities. To achieve these aims, a total number of 63 Iranian learners (university students) were randomly assigned to two experimental groups (each 21 participants), and one control group of 21 participants. Each group participated in the pre-test under similar conditions, then, group A received a glossary of unknown vocabularies related to the reading text and the group B participated in the discussion related to the topic of the reading tasks, the group C, as the control group, received no pre-teaching treatment. Then, the post-test was conducted and the means of the three groups on the post-test were calculated. The results of the One-way ANOVA indicated that both types of activities pre-teaching vocabulary and pre-questioning were effective. There was not any significant difference among the effect of different kinds of activities, pre-teaching vocabulary vs. pre-questioning, regarding learners’ ability of reading. The findings of the study can have some implications for EFL students, teachers, and text book designers.
