An experimental study of the effect of prior knowledge on reading comprehension of EFL students

Abstract

The uee of prior knowledge while reading in the first language has been a primary focus for second languase researchers and educators. It is claimed that if a learner can build a bridge between what he already knows about the world and what is presented in the passage comprciiensiovn will be archieved. According to Carrel and Eisterhoid (1987), this use of prior knowledge lias been formalized as "schema theory". Schema theory explains that ci text does not carry moaning by itself, it only provides directions as to how readers sliould retrieve meaning from their pri.ir knowledge- Miuiy studies have been conducted on the effect of prior knowledge. However, almost all of these studies are carried out in ESL settings. This i'.tudy aims at providing insight into EFL learners use of their prior knowledge to comprehend information from a passage written in a foreign language. The main question investigated in this stuviy was whether a itivating EFL readers' prior knowledge by a pre-reading activity affects their recall of a text and whether this activation has an effect over a longer period of time. To acquire an answer to this question, 20 native Turkish subjects from Bilkent University in Ankiira were chosen and divided into an experimental and a control gr-oup. Both groups took a pro test which measured theii prior knowledge about a topic. Then, the experimental group subjects were provided with a pre reading activity. An Anticipation the findings concluded that there was no relationship between EFL subjects' prior knowledge and their comprehension of a text. Therefore, activating prior knowledge did not significantly increase subjects' retelling of the text. These conclusions contradict the findings of past studies on the effect of prior knowledge on reading comprehension. However, according to one of the latest studies on bilingual readers' use of background knowledge in learning from a text. Roller and Matambo (1992) found that bilingual readers used prior knowledge to improve comprehension of some passages, but not others. Characteristics of passages seemed to override the influence of prior knowledge. This selective use of prior knowledge has important implications for future research on prior knowledge and the EFL reader. It is difficult to make generalizations with the findings of the current research because of its limitations. Nevertheless, the conclusions of the experiment should be of interest to EFL teachers, teacher trainers and curriculum developers.