A Study On The Effects Of Topic Familiarity,Working Memory Capacity And Second Language Proficiency On Senior High School Students’ English Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is an important part of students’ information input mode,especially second language reading comprehension has always attracted scholars’ attention.Researchers are also committed to exploring the factors that affect second language reading comprehension,among which topic familiarity,working memory capacity and students’ second language proficiency have gradually become hot research topics.However,there were few studies that combined topic familiarity,working memory capacity and second language proficiency in the past few decades.In this study,60 senior two students in a middle school in Chifeng were taken as the research participants.Topic familiarity questionnaire,English working memory span task and Chifeng unified midterm examination paper were employed as research instruments to explore the effect of topic familiarity,working memory capacity and second language proficiency on senior high school students’ English reading comprehension.It mainly answers the following three research questions:1.What is the effect of topic familiarity on senior high school students’ English reading comprehension? 2.What is the effect of working memory capacity on senior high school students’ English reading comprehension?3.How does the second language proficiency work on the effect of working memory capacity on reading comprehension of English materials with different familiarity? The data collected were analyzed by SPSS 26.0in this study.The results show that: 1.Topic familiarity has a significant impact on senior high school students’ English reading comprehension.There are significant differences in reading comprehension between high-level students and low-level students when reading expository texts and narrative texts with different familiarity.2.Working memory capacity plays an important role in senior high school students’ English reading comprehension.The working memory capacity of high-level students is positively correlated with both their unfamiliar expository English reading comprehension(r =.471,P < 0.05)and familiar English narrative reading comprehension(r =.525,p < 0.05).The working memory capacity of low-level students is positively correlated with both their familiar English expository reading comprehension(r =.592,P < 0.001)and unfamiliar English narrative reading comprehension(r =.675,p <0.001).3.Second language proficiency affects senior high school students’ English reading comprehension,and at the same time affects the effect of working memory capacity on English reading comprehension.The second language proficiency of high-level students is positively correlated with reading comprehension of familiar expository texts and unfamiliar narrative texts.Second language proficiency has a significant moderating effect on working memory capacity in reading comprehension of unfamiliar expository texts and familiar narrative texts.Low-level students’ second language proficiency is positively correlated with unfamiliar expository reading comprehension and familiar narrative reading comprehension.Second language proficiency has a significant moderating effect on working memory capacity in reading comprehension of familiar expository texts and unfamiliar narrative texts.Based on the above results,the author puts forward some suggestions on the teaching of English reading comprehension in senior high schools,points out some limitations of this study,and puts forward some suggestions for future research.