Background and culture as factors in EFL reading comprehension

Abstract

An experimental comparison was made between two original passages in English written for ESL/EFL consumers. Since the subjects tested were 159 Japanese women, unfamiliar, non-Japanese elements were changed to conform more to the expectations of the readers tested. Only a few terms were changed in each of two passages: e.g. names of persons and places; in one instance kissing was changed to hugging. All subjects completed two cloze tests: one over one of the passages in its original form and the other over the other in the modified form. A possible order effect was controlled by counter balancing, and transfer across tests was minimized both by counterbalancing and by using cloze tests over two distinct passages. The hypothesis that such minor changes in textual elements would result in a significantly better performance on cloze tests based on the modified texts was sustained. It is suggested that teachers and materials producers might want to take such factors into consideration.