Second language reading: The interrelationships among text adjuncts, students' proficiency levels and reading strategies

According to the psycholinguistic view of reading, readers use their background knowledge to interpret texts. This background knowledge has been termed "schemata". Distinct from the notion of schema is research on the role of text adjuncts in second language (L2) reading. Text adjuncts are pre-reading information such as pictures, definition lists, or text structure information regarding the text provided to help students understand the reading passage. Several researchers found that the facilitative effects of different text adjuncts on L2 reading may vary as a function of learners' proficiency and of text types. The primary goal of my study was to investigate the effects of different types of text adjuncts on L2 reading comprehension. Specifically, my study examined whether L2 learners from various proficiency levels benefit from different types of text adjuncts. I also examined the relationship between English as a Second Language (ESL) learners' anxiety levels and their proficiency levels. Finally, I examined the relationship between ESL learners' reading strategies and their reading comprehension ability. I hypothesized that Low-Level ESL learners will benefit more from a text adjunct that provides a definition list than from one that provides information on the text type, while the opposite would be true for High-Level ESL learners. Research participants were 61 heterogeneous ESL students. Participants were divided into a high proficiency group and a low proficiency group based on the class placement. Participants in each proficiency level were further divided into two treatment groups (vocabulary group and expanded framework group) and a control group. After reading a passage, students were asked to write down as much as they could remember from the passage for their recall protocol, without referring back to it. Results showed that the high-proficiency ESL students benefited most, as hypothesized, from the expanded framework text adjunct when they read in an L2. Results also showed that, contrary to expectations, the low-proficiency ESL students benefited from both the expanded framework text adjunct and the vocabulary text adjunct.