Interaction Effects Between Topic Familiarity And Language Proficiency On Reading Comprehension

Reading is an important tool in acquiring information and learning; in addition, it is a primary goal of education. Reading in English in the university has long been attached much importance in China. Schema theory is an important concept in EFL reading, which describes the process by which readers combine their own background knowledge with the information in a text to comprehend that text Most of the domestic empirical researches study the effect of background knowledge on reading performance, in ignorance of the various effects of background knowledge on reading comprehension according to L2 proficiency level. Since topic familiarity is an important indicator of background knowledge, this thesis reports on an experiment study carried out to explore the interaction effects of topic familiarity and language proficiency on EFL reading comprehension of Chinese university students. 104 sophomore non-English major students from three classes of Dalian University of Technology participate in this experiment. They are tested with four passages on four different areas based on TOEFL passages.The results reveal that both topic familiarity and language proficiency have significant effects on reading performance, and there are interaction effects of the two factors. Statistical results find that the effect of topic familiarity on reading comprehension varies according to the level of second language proficiency of the reader. The poor students have to acquire a certain level of language proficiency before they can use their background knowledge. Superior level of language proficiency can compensate for lack of subjects area knowledge. Good students with their excellent decoding skills can decode letters and words rapidly in a bottom-up fashion, and therefore do not normally need to resort to background knowledge. When they read quite difficult passage, they would utilize the background knowledge to aid comprehension. The study suggests that different teaching emphasis should be given to the students with different proficiency levels so as to make teaching more effective and efficient. It is best to suit the remedy to the case and consider the individual differences among the students. What's more, this kind of schema-based methodology can be more widely used in EFL reading.