EFL Learners’ Levels of Comprehension Across Text Structures: A Comparison of Literal and Inferential Comprehension of Descriptive and Enumerative Expository Texts

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Mahmood Saadatnia ; Saeed Ketabi ; Mansoor Tavakoli
• 关键词：Expository text type ; Levels of reading comprehension ; Descriptive and enumerative text structure
• 刊名：Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：December 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：45
• 期：6
• 页码：1499-1513
• 全文大小：480 KB
• 刊物主题：Psychology, general; Cognitive Psychology; Psycholinguistics;
• 出版者：Springer US
• ISSN：1573-6555
• 卷排序：45

文摘

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between text structure and two levels of reading comprehension, namely literal and inferential, in Iranian EFL learners. Studies have generally found that learners perform differently after they have read different text structures (Amiri et al. in Proc Soc Behav Sci 66:402–409, 2012). The text structures in focus were descriptive and enumerative expository texts. One hundred eighty upper-intermediate EFL learners were assigned four reading passages, two including descriptive and the other two enumerative text structure, followed by both literal and inferential multiple-choice items. A number of paired-samples t tests were run to provide answers to the research questions of this study. The results indicated that the participants meaningfully outperformed on the descriptive texts at both levels of literal and inferential comprehension. The findings also revealed that in both text structures of description and enumeration, literal comprehension significantly outweighed inferential comprehension. Implications were made for L2 materials developers, language teachers, and language testers regarding the consideration of text typical features in their practice.