주제의 친숙도와 독해전략이 영어독해에 미치는 영향

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether there are any differences in Korean high school students' reading comprehension of English texts according to their topic familiarity with the texts and their uses of reading strategies and whether there are any relationship between topic familiarity and their reading strategies. The subjects were 89 third grade high school students in Korea. They were divided into three groups on the basis of their English proficiency: Beginner-level, Intermediate-level, and Advanced-level. For identifying the reading strategies of the students involved in this study, a questionnaire was chosen which included 35 items out of the Anderson's 47 reading strategies and was given to 89 students. They were divided into three groups: Beginner- use, Intermediate-use, and Advanced-use. The subjects were tested on two kinds of texts repeatedly, of which one was assumed to be familiar and another unfamiliar to the subjects according to their background knowledge. Topic familiarity and English proficiency were independent variables while the scores of reading comprehension were dependent variables. A three X two analyses of variance with repeated measures was performed on the comprehension of texts data was analyzed by using SPSS WIN 10.5. The results were as follows: First, there were statistically significant differences in reading comprehension according to the topic familiarity and proficiency levels. The more subjects are familiar with the texts, the higher scores they obtain on reading comprehension. Second, there were no statistically significant differences in reading comprehension according to their uses of reading strategies. This indicates that reading strategy did not have any effect on reading comprehension. Third, there were no interaction effects on reading comprehension between topic familiarity and reading strategy use. The average scores of reading comprehension on the basis of topic familiarity did not vary according to reading strategy use. The pedagogical implication is that when students read the texts they have to be familiar with the texts in advance through background knowledge of the text's content.