From the results of this study, it appears that providing students with solid background knowledge in the core areas of the discipline is of paramount importance in the university education for L2 reading comprehension. The present study has indicated that EFL students can read with better comprehension when equipped with proper prior knowledge.
Background knowledge is a more powerful predictor of summary performance in this study, and it seems to be more critical than language proficiency in the reading of authentic content specific passages. Since English is important at the tertiary level, university instructors could prepare students for a smooth transition between learning to read and reading to learn (Lee & Schallert, 1997).
In reading an academic text, most EFL students have to deal with both linguistic complexities of the text and the content laden with unfamiliar
concepts. Not all students would be able to read in their L2 to gain information. To ease the burden, instructors could provide the specific background knowledge through pre-reading activities. It is important for an instructor to enhance readers’ knowledge before reading. Fortunately, in an EFL environment, L1 reading materials are handy, which provide an easier alternative to facilitate their L2 reading comprehension. With the medium of Chinese, students can obtain background knowledge without extra linguistic burden. Through L1 support, and with large exposure to L2 academic reading materials, EFL students would eventually reach the attainment of the academic language skills required.
A second pedagogical implication is related to summarization skills.
As shown in this study, summary writing is an activity that has not been acquired or mastered by the participants. This important study skill could be a determiner of academic success. Almost all learning activities at university require students to extract main ideas, condense, and remember what has been read. Since some of the participants in this study used fragmented ideas in their summary writing which did not reflect an overall understanding of the text, it is suggested that instructors at the university level integrate more summarization activities into their curricula to enhance Taiwanese students’
summarization skills. Instruction of summarization has been proven to improve students’ organization of writing (Day, 1986; Hare & Borchardt, 1984); therefore, summary writing skills should be taught explicitly for students to have a clear understanding of the processes involved in writing a summary. Students benefit most when the instructors address the issues of how to recognize logical relationship and how to filter relevant information (Day, 1986). Explicit teaching therefore allows students to recognize the textual pattern and hone in on missing or misstated information; as a consequence, the improved summary writing can meet the pre-defined standard for university students.
Conclusion
The present study is an attempt to explore the effects of background knowledge and L2 reading proficiency on content specific reading.
Its conclusion should be considered limited in two aspects. First, the participants of the study were recruited via random sampling. The method was used to create groups without involving any potential biases. Therefore, the participants were representatives of what was normally found in a university. This method did not involve prior screening tests to pre-select the top notch high achievers or those at the lower end of the achievement spectrum. If the study had pre-selected both the high and low achievers in English reading proficiencies and background knowledge levels for groupings, the result might have been different. Second, the focus of the current study is on the end result, not of the process involved in reading comprehension. The participants were not interviewed to provide data on how they used their political knowledge or their L2 reading proficiency to comprehend the text. Future research should include introspective measures to probe deeper into how a reader comprehends academic-related reading materials.
Even with the limitations, there is a reason to believe that the findings of this study are a step towards a better understanding on the effects of different knowledge bases on reading comprehension. For one reason, instead of assuming students’ abilities based on the areas of their study, this study adopted a separate instrument to assess background knowledge.
It was discovered that some students did possess knowledge outside their majors, as clearly some of them read materials that are not related to their own academic training. Also, at university level the specialization in subject areas did not warrant that the students have built a solid knowledge base within their own studies. The research findings indicate that in research into the effect of discipline-related knowledge on academic reading abilities, a direct assessment, i.e., background knowledge assessment, is the best way to provide a complete picture of the students’ knowledge bases. Secondly, the study empirically established that reading comprehension does not merely depend on linguistic knowledge. The interactions of language knowledge and background knowledge investigated in the present study helps to explain a significant amount of the success or failure of reading comprehension at higher education in Taiwan.
Acknowledgements
Grateful acknowledgement is made to my advisor, Professor Chiou-Lan Chern, for her instructive advice. I am also indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. A special thank you goes to those who contributed to this paper: Yu-Ching Kelly Tseng, Yi-Hung Eric Chiou, Yu-Hsien Eunice Chiou, Tzu-Chiao Su, Chen-Yu Jenny Chen, Mei-Rong Alice Chen, John-Michael Nix, Ya-Wen Fu, and Ying-Ping Grace Huang.
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