Effect of topic familiarity on literal and higher-order reading comprehension

النوع : Mémoire

Activating background knowledge is known to play an important role in reading co mprehension. Many researchers around the world have investigated this topic. Mos t of the studies, however, were conducted in monolingual intermediate and second ary school settings; few of them were conducted in bilingual contexts. In this s tudy, the researcher investigated the effect of topic familiarity and background knowledge on bilingual Lebanese fourth grade students? literal as well as highe r order comprehension. A basic premise behind the study is that background knowl edge is necessary to higher order thinking that involves interpretive, critical and evaluative reading (Pressley, 2001). The study employed a pretest-postest control group experimental design. The sub jects are bilingual Lebanese fourth graders (n=44) learning English as a foreign language (EFL) at a private school in Mount Lebanon. The subjects were assigned to control and experimental conditions. The experimental group received direct instruction in building relevant background knowledge; whereas, the control grou p followed the procedures of lesson planning of their textbooks. Results indicat ed that there was statistically significant difference on the dependent variable of the literal comprehension when reading nonfiction texts in favor of the expe rimental group, and on the dependent variable of the higher order comprehension when reading fiction texts in favor of the control group.