The Contribution and background knowledge to L2 text-comprehension

Abstract

ABSTRACT Title : The contribution of background knowledge to L2 text -comprehension Author: Şencan Topaloğlu Thesis Chairperson: Dr. Theodore S. Rodgers, Bilkent University, MA TEFL Program Committee Members : Dr. Susan D. Bosher, Ms. Bena Gül Peker, Bilkent University, MA TEFL Program Recent theories of reading, pioneered by Goodman's (1967) psycholinguistic model of reading, acknowledge that the readers' background knowledge, that is, what they already know, strongly affects their understanding of a text. The proponents of this view of reading propose that readers are active participants in the meaning -making process, as a reaction to the earlier assumption that readers are passive recipients of meaning on the printed page. This study intended to show the contribution of background knowledge to comprehension by looking at the process of reading in the task of interpreting a short story, using think-aloud protocols. It was hypothesized that different readers would interpret the same text differently as a consequence of their different backgrounds.Four subjects participated in the study. During the initial interview, introductory information about their background knowledge was obtained. Prior to the reading task, they were given a training session on think-aloud protocols to provide them with some guidance as to what they were expected to do. Then they were given the target text, and they verbalized their thoughts into a tape-recorder as they occurred to them while reading. Their think-aloud protocols were then transcribed and translated. In the post-processing interview, the subjects were asked how they arrived at the meanings they constructed. In the data analysis, the text-related points that the subjects referred to were extracted from the text and the individual way each subject responded to those points were compared and contrasted to display how the text was activated by the four readers. Conversely, their background knowledge as activated by the text was examined in separate case descriptions of the four readers. In this two-way analysis, the information both from the protocols and the interviews was used to verify the proposed points. A coding scheme developed by the researcher was made use of to clarify the nature of background knowledge.The results show that readers do indeed generate different interpretations due to their background knowledge. It was found out that readers make use of their background knowledge in explicit and implicit ways, that is, directly and indirectly. The information the subjects gave about the reading strategies they used and their explanations of how they arrived at the meanings they expressed revealed that they were not very aware of the role of background knowledge in the process of understanding. The expanding, diversifying and also misleading features of background knowledge were also identified. The readers' background knowledge enabled them to elaborate on text-related points, and to produce more than one interpretation for a particular point, while at the same time caused them to misinterpret the text. Another outcome was that readers not only brought their background knowledge but also their very person to the task of reading; their personal characteristics were reflected through their protocols.