Effects of background knowledge on Jordanian students' reading comprehension

Abstract EN

The Purpose of this study was to compare the effects of providing background information on students' comprehension of ,'Before Their Time,' and 'The Lottery" texts.

The author assigned these two short stories to 40 freshman and sophomore students, chosen at random from a Jordanian university and divided into four groups.

Each group was exposed to two treatment conditions.

The two conditions were (a) providing background information necessary for understanding the upcoming texts; (b) a control condition in which no prereading instruction was provided.

Results on multiple-choice tests showed strong positive effects of the background knowledge treatment; whereas students, responses to attitude questionnaire showed that they generally respond positively to the experimental treatments.

The implications of the findings should encourage EFL teachers to give some background information to assist students in reading