영어 텍스트의 언어 난이도와 학습자의 문화적 배경지식이 독해에 미치는 영향

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the level of language difficulty in an English text and the cultural background knowledge on the reading comprehension of EFL students in high school. The subjects were 83 high school students. They were randomly divided into two groups. One group of the subjects read two unadapted English passages, one from Korean culture and the other from American culture; The other group of the subjects read the same stories in adapted English. The subjects were tested on reading comprehension through the use of five multiple choice questions, four false-true questions on explicit and implicit information and one subjective question on the title of the text. The analysis of variance by using SPSS WIN 11.0 indicated that the cultural origin of the story and the language difficulty had different effects on the comprehension of the learners. The results showed that when learners read the text about which they had cultural background knowledge, the difficulty of the text hardly affected their understanding of the contents. However, when learners read the text about which they had little cultural background knowledge, both the level of lexical and syntactic difficulty of the text affected their reading comprehension. That is, learners were better able to understand the text in adapted English. From the research, it is possible to extract some implications for selection and preparation of reading materials and for teaching reading. First, since the culturally determined background knowledge of the text has positive effects on learners' reading comprehension, it is necessary to consider learners' needs and their cultural background knowledge before choosing reading materials. If the reading materials contain culturally familiar topic to learners, they feel more interested in reading. Second, through various pre-teaching of the cultures in foreign countries to activate learners' background knowledge, teachers should make learners more familiar with the texts in advance, then it would help students to get motivated to read even if the text is a little challenging.