THE STUDY OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS' READING COMPREHENSION ABILITY DURING EMERGING ADULTHOOD PERIOD FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF GENDER DIFFERENCES IN INTERPERSONAL IDENTITY STATUSES

Accurate specification of identity status provides valuable details regarding individuals' personality characteristics which can, in turn, play a crucial role in second language acquisition. The driving force behind this sociolinguistic study was the paucity of empirical research on the relationship among interpersonal identity status, gender, and reading comprehension ability during emerging adulthood period. 352 EFL juniors (184 female and 168 male) completed one demographic questionnaire along with an EOMEIS-2 questionnaire, and took four reading comprehension tests. Pearson correlation and two-way ANOVA were run for data analyses. The results indicated a statistically significant positive correlation between interpersonal identity achievement and reading comprehension scores. The results also indicated that there is a negative correlation between interpersonal identity diffusion and reading comprehension ability and that the relationship between gender and reading comprehension ability turned out to be statistically insignificant given the interpersonal identity statuses of the participants. The findings of this study could have some important implications for educational policy makers.