A Study On Effects Of Coherence And Relevance In Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is an active cognitive process in which explicit information of text and readers' strategic control interact each other. The nature of text comprehension is to construct a mental representation of text. Readers process text information in increasing depth during the construction of mental representation: surface code, textbase and situation model. Local coherence of text is the propositional coherence which can facilitate the textbase processing; while global coherence goes beyond text features, it is the "coherence of mind" which integrates readers' background knowledge into explicit text information. To attain global coherence, readers have to generate elaborative inferences to construct a situation model. In order to enhance readers' deeper level of processing, relevance of text should be promoted or local coherence be interrupted on purpose to prompt readers generate explanatory inferences at a broader and more global level. The aim of this study is to explore the effects of coherence and relevance on different levels of processing, and whether there is a complementary relationship between them.This paper adopts Kintsch's Text Representation Theory to clarify the three processing levels from a psycholinguistic perspective, which lays the theoretical foundation for following investigations into effects of coherence and relevance. Then the author reviews literature concerning coherence and relevance and proposes a hypothesis that breaks in local coherence and relevance promoting interventions may enhance readers' deeper processing. Furthermore, the possible relationship between effects of coherence and relevance on deeper processing is complementary.Based on above theoretical foundation, four reading tasks were designed to measure readers' perception of coherence, effects of coherence and relevance on textbase and situation model respectively. Data analysis indicated coherence and relevance did affect reader's textbase processing, but the distinction among groups was not significant. At deeper level processing, scores of both recall essay and holistic interpretation showed that relevance facilitated the construction of situation model, but effect of coherence was minor. Experimental results also substantiated that relevance has a compensatory effect for coherence in deep level processing.According to experimental results, discussions and implications are given: 1. Textbook compilers and teachers should promote readers' deeper level processing by giving specific purpose or goal to readers, rather than focus on the external coherence of text itself. 2. Readers should monitor their reading process by asking questions to construct situation model. 3. Disadvantages of current reading comprehension test methods which largely adopt the multiple choice item should be overcome by more applicable method.Final part is the conclusion of the whole paper. It gives a summary of main ideas of this paper, points out the restrictions of the present study, and indicates the directions for the future research.