Educational psychology the effects of cultural background on ESL college students' performance on reading comprehension and recall of culturally oriented texts

How a reader’s cultural background affects comprehension has been an issue in reading research for decades (Reynolds, Taylor, Steffensen, Shirey, & Anderson, 1982; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983; Bartlett, 1932). Previous studies (Steffensen, Joag-dev &Anderson, 1979; Johnson, 1981) have shown that texts from one’s own culture should be easier to read and comprehend than content from an unfamiliar cultural background. However, the effects of background knowledge on reading comprehension of English as a Second Language (ESL) learners from different cultural backgrounds still needs more research. In the present study the researcher looked at the reading comprehension of college ESL students with Chinese and Islamic culture background when reading two English texts with Chinese or Islamic cultural content. Thirty-nine participants read two texts written in English, one was titled Confucius; the other was titled Muhammad. Participants were instructed to read each passage at their own pace. They wrote a written recall of each text after reading, followed by answering a set of 8 multiple-choice comprehension questions on the content of the text. At the last, they were required to complete a one-page debriefing questionnaire to elicit their native country, native language, cultural background etc.
Two-way ANOVA of a mixed design, with a within-subject independent variable of test and a between-subject independent variable of nationality, was conducted with each of the dependent variables of performance on the multiple-choice comprehension test, units of idea and elaboration in their recall of the text content. A consistent pattern was revealed in the data analysis, that is, student reading and comprehension on culturally oriented materials was affected by their cultural background. Students tend to comprehend and remember more about the content of their own culture, and the pattern was more obvious for the Chinese students.