Semantic Constructivity in ESL Reading Comprehension

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a study whose focus was semantic constructivity in ESL reading comprehension. It was found that ESL students exhibit semantic constructivity similar to L1 children and adults, i.e., they use their knowledge of the world and contribute to information found in the text. However, ESL readers' contributions to the text may be marred by language interference, developing English language competence and data- and resource-limitation phenomena. This study attempts to extend empirical research on subjects' comprehension of single sentences by examining their comprehension of sets of related sentences, the research reported here focussing on L2 subjects. That readers bring meaning to the text during the reading comprehension process and that readers frequently remember more propositions than are encoded in the sentences which they read are by now well established tenets in both L1 children and adult reading research. These acknowledged tenets imply that reading is an active process wherein the reader brings meaning to the text itself and the reading process; much, if not all, of this meaning comes from the reader's knowledge of the world and previous experience with language. Background There has been a perceived change in focus on both the linguistic units studied and measured in reading comprehension research and the processes attributed to the reader during the act of reading comprehension. For too long a period of time the sentence has been the principal unit of linguistic analysis and description and the object measure in reading comprehension (Bormuth et al 1970, Pearson 1974-75). Linguists and reading comprehension researchers have concerned themselves with how a reader associates a surface string of words (surface structure, constituent structure) with a semantic representation (deep structure).