Abstract
Reading comprehension is the most important skill in the absence of oral communication opportunities in foreign language teaching situation. So, the effect of different factors on reading comprehension has been studied. One of these factors is of a text. Is readers' comprehension influenced by of a text? What is the difference between different gender groups in comprehension of cultural familiar and unfamiliar texts? In order to answer these questions 50 intermediate EFL learners (25 males and 25 females) were asked to take a reading test. Four reading comprehension texts were used as an instrument, two texts were based on cultural familiar topics and the other two were based on cultural unfamiliar topics. Each passage was followed by 4 comprehension questions. The results of statistical analyses showed that learners performed significantly better on cultural familiar texts, but there is no difference between men and women in using cultural schema and familiarity of text. Key words: Reading comprehension, schema theory, cultural familiarity.
Highlights
The dearth of oral communication opportunities with native speakers for Iranian EFL learners leads us to consider reading comprehension as the most important skill, especially in academic settings (Dehghan and Sadighi, 2011)
1.Does cultural familiarity of a text have any significant impact on the comprehension of Iranian EFL students'?
The findings of this research demonstrate that cultural background is an important factor in comprehension of texts in second language
Summary
The dearth of oral communication opportunities with native speakers for Iranian EFL learners leads us to consider reading comprehension as the most important skill, especially in academic settings (Dehghan and Sadighi, 2011). The second definition of reading entails that students need to activate their background knowledge as well as their linguistic knowledge to comprehend a text. Based on this theory, prior knowledge gained a significant role in comprehension.
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