Effects on Reading Comprehension of Building Background Knowledge

Abstract

This experimental study investigated the effects on reading comprehension of building background knowledge. The following specific points were addressed. Would prior cultural experience have different effects on ESL students' reading comprehension of information linked to a familiar aspect of an American custom in comparison to information linked to an unknown aspect of this custom? Would time of presentation of the meanings of preselected unfamiliar vocabulary words in the same passage have different effects on reading comprehension? Seventy two advanced ESL students on the university level read a passage on the topic of Halloween. The passage contained unfamiliar and familiar information based on the subjects' recent experience of this custom. Subjects studied the meanings of preselected unfamiliar vocabulary words before reading and/or found them in the text. Statistical analysis of the recall of the passage and of the sentence recognition task indicates that prior cultural experience prepared readers for comprehension of the familiar information about Halloween in the passage. However, exposure to meanings of the target vocabulary words by any of the treatments seems not to have a significant effect on reading comprehension. Characteristics of a text can have a large impact on readers' ability to comprehend it. The cultural background of the topic and the level of vocabulary difficulty of a passage influence reading comprehension. Goodman (1971) has described reading as a cyclical process by which a reader reconstructs a text by sampling, predicting, testing, and confirming. Goodman's argument is that the good reader takes advantage of the redundancy inherent in language which enables a reconstruction of the whole text although only a part of the graphic material has been extracted. Once such an internal reconstruction of the textual message has taken place, the reader tests its accuracy against previous information. Previous information can be the information extracted from a text as well as the reader's background knowledge on the topic of a text. When the reader confirms that the reconstruction is in agreement with previous knowledge, then the cyclical process of sampling begins again. If there is some inconsistency or inaccuracy in the reconstruction of a text because of a conflict with the reader's background knowledge, the reader may reread the text or may not believe the informa