Levels of Cultural Familiarity and Strategy Use in Reading Comprehension (2024)

Learning and Instruction, 1992

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 2000

KOMPETENSI

This study aims at describing the effect of the third semester students' religious knowledge on their literal and inferential comprehension. This study is experimental since it is experimental in nature. The design used is called post-test only controlled group design. The analysis presented statistically. In conducting the analysis the writer applied statistical technique using t-test because the data were in the form of test scores representing the third semester students' literal and inferential reading comprehension performance. The data representing the third semester students' literal and inferential reading comprehension performance were collected using reading test in multiple choice format. Two texts on the basis of which test items were developed dealt with Christmas Eve and Ramadhan Eid. These two texts were selected for the two celebrations are most popular religious events in Christian and Moslem religious group. The sample of this research were taken from t...

Findings from a two-year project, which investigated the entry-level English reading skills of Grade 8 non-primary speakers of English, are presented. The article raises some theoretical and methodological issues related to reading development and assessment in schools. The generally poor reading skills of many learners entering high school raise questions about current classroom practices and disparities in literacy accomplishment in primary schools. By making our findings available to scholarly scrutiny, we wish to stimulate discussion on reading instruction and assessment in schools, and educational accountability, and so hope to encourage further research and discussion in this field.

Journal of Reading Behavior, 1985

The present study was designed to shed light on whether some of the problems that average and below average readers have in comprehending expository texts stem primarily from lack of familiarity with conjunctions or a tendency to ignore these markers. On the basis of Gates-MacGinitie reading comprehension scores, 93 students in grades 5 and 7 were classified into high, medium, and low reading levels. All students read short expository texts under four conjunction manipulation conditions and answered comprehension questions. The conjunction manipulations within the texts were designed for examination of the roles of analyzed linguistic knowledge and cognitive control in comprehension. Analyses indicated that all groups benefited from the highlighting of explicit conjunctions. The comprehension of interpropositional relationships by average and below average readers was enhanced when explicit conjunctions were available, relative to an implicit condition. Furthermore, the deep process...

Teachers College, Columbia University Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics, 2009

The paper reviews research on second language (L2) reading, focusing on the various factors involved, i.e., orthography, vocabulary, grammar, background knowledge, and metacognitive strategies. Based on the overview of L2 reading research, how grammar makes a unique contribution to L2 reading comprehension is emphasized. The discussion includes analysis of the distinctive roles served by background knowledge and linguistic knowledge, the comparative roles of L1 reading ability and L2 proficiency, and the relative weight of vocabulary and grammar in accounting for L2 reading comprehension. The paper concludes with issues for further consideration and suggestions for future studies on the relationship between grammatical knowledge and L2 reading comprehension.

Target, 2014

The purpose of this study was to find a method to measure difficulty in a translation task. Readability formulas have been suggested to be a useful tool and yet this needs to be empirically tested. In this study, NASA Task Load Index, a multidimensional scale for measuring mental workload, was used to assess the level of translation difficulty for the translator. It was found that a text’s readability only partially accounts for its translation difficulty level. Translation quality score was found to be an unreliable indicator of translation difficulty level, while time-on-task was significantly, but weakly, related to translation difficulty level. A formula was developed to predict a text’s translation difficulty level for a translator by using the translator’s pre-translation rating.

Advanced Reading and Writing Skills in ELT: APA Style Handbook aims to offer two syllabuses for Advanced Reading and Writing Skills Course in two semesters. Thus, this book mainly provides information on academic writing skills in English Language Teaching in relation with APA style. Following the introduction into academic writing, it introduces how to connect ideas with reference to unity and coherence and how to refer to other sources by employing in-text citations rules appropriately. Related information on reviewing literature, parts of an academic paper, headings, writing a list of references, and presenting tables and figures is also provided. Moreover, to familiarize readers with academic style of writing, it also presents information on the notion of reading process, reading strategies, models of reading, assessing reading, and background knowledge and nativization. In this respect, reading researchers may also benefit from this text.Apart from undergraduate ELT students and lecturers of Advanced Reading and Writing Skills Course, postgraduate students and researchers will discover that Advanced Reading and Writing Skills in ELT: APA Style Handbook helps them in writing their assignments, theses, and manuscripts by providing examples on APA rules. Although APA Publication Manual lists rules on academic writing, many post graduate students, even experienced researchers, may experience difficulty in applying these rules in their studies. Therefore, the text provides samples on a variety of topics in relation with academic writing in ELT.

Language Learning & Technology, 1998

Language Teaching, 2005

TESOL Quarterly, 1992

Murphey and Alber (1985) postulated a pop song (PS) register and described it as the "motherese of adolescents" and as "affective foreigner talk" because of the simple and affective language. THe PS register was further characterized as a "teddy-bear-in- the-ear" to capture its diskless communicative qualities. More detailed analysis of a larger corpus (Murphey 1989, 1990a) have notw been done which support the earlier description and further show PSs to be repetitive, conversation-like and about half the speed of spoken discourse. This simplicity, teir highly affective dialogic features, and their vague references (ghost discourse), allow listeners to use them in personally associative ways. THese discourse features and the song-stuck-in-my-head phenomenon (discussed below) make them potentially rich learning materials in and out of the classroom.

South Valley University, Qena Faculty of Education , 2001

MA dissertation

In this thesis I explore the complexity of FL (Foreign Language) reading through qualitatively and quantitatively analysing the forms, ways, and mechanisms applied by adult readers at tertiary university education level to construct meaning in an ESP/EAP (English for Specific and Academic Purposes) multilingual educational context at the Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), in Mozambique. I attempt to answer to the following research questions (a) What do learners and users of English in an EAP context resort to construct meaning from text?, (b) Are reading strategies used effectively by these learners to attain comprehension? and (c) Are these learners aware of their use of reading strategies? I identify reading strategies using a holistic eclectic research methodology that includes a Needs Analysis, a Reading Comprehension Test (IELTS), Questionnaires and a Think aloud Method (TAM). This holistic approach anchors partially on Bernhardt’s 2005 compensatory model of reading in a secon...

The present study investigated the effect of cross-cultural background knowledge instruction on Iranian English foreign language learners' reading comprehension ability. For this aim, sixty female EFL learners between 17 and 19 years of age were selected at a pre-university high school in Sabzevar based on their scores in language proficiency test and then were assigned to two groups of thirty learners. The teacher presented ten passages with the cultural content in both experimental and control groups. During the experiment, the teacher made her students familiar with the target culture. On the other hand, the students in the control group did not benefit from the advantages of cultural warm-up activities which were designed to activate the cross-cultural background knowledge of the students in the experimental group. At the end of this treatment, the two groups took a post-test to see whether the treatment had any influence on their reading comprehension ability; the post-test was piloted already. The results of the post-test showed that the groups performed differently on the post-test, which indicated that familiarity with specific culturally-oriented language reading text would improve Iranian EFL learners' reading comprehension ability. Also, it revealed that having background knowledge of some cultural contents strongly affect reading ability of the texts with considered contents than the alternative cultural contents.