A study on the relationship between topic familiarity and EFL reading comprehension performance of english translation students of college of television

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG LIÊN A STUDY ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOPIC FAMILIAR

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG LIÊN

A STUDY ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOPIC FAMILIARITY AND EFL READING COMPREHENSION PERFORMANCE OF ENGLISH

TRANSLATION STUDENTS OF COLLEGE OF TELEVISION

(Một nghiên cứu về mối quan hệ giữa mức độ quen thuộc với chủ đề bài đọc và khả năng đọc hiểu của sinh viên khoa tiếng Anh Biên Dịch

trường Cao Đẳng Truyền Hình)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Hanoi - 2016

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG LIÊN

A STUDY ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TOPIC FAMILIARITY AND EFL READING COMPREHENSION PERFORMANCE OF ENGLISH

TRANSLATION STUDENTS OF COLLEGE OF TELEVISION

(Một nghiên cứu về mối quan hệ giữa mức độ quen thuộc với chủ đề bài đọc và khả năng đọc hiểu của sinh viên khoa tiếng Anh Biên Dịch

trường Cao Đẳng Truyền Hình)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr. Nguyễn Xuân Thơm

s

Hanoi - 2016

DECLARATION

I, Nguyen Thi Phuong Lien, certify that this work is my own study The data, results and finding in this thesis are completely true The thesis has not been submitted for a higher degree to any other university or institution

Hanoi,2016

Nguyễn Thị Phương Liên

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Xuan Thom for thoroughly instructing and helping me to clarify the issues, for the insightful comments, and for always giving encouraging words to me Without his invaluable advice and support, the study could not have come to success

I would also give special thanks to Assoc Prof Dr Le Van Canh who cultivated the idea about the thesis‟ topic to me, and also suggested me the very first approach to conduct the study

I wish to thank my colleagues who are English Teachers of English Translation Department, College of Television for their participating in and for supporting me during the thesis conducting process

THE TABLE OF CONTENT

Declaration i

Abstract ii

Acknowledgements iii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale for the study 1

2 Objectives of the study 2

3 Method of the study 2

4 Significance of the study 3

5 The scope of the research 3

6 Design of the thesis 4

PART B: DEVELOPMENT Error! Bookmark not defined CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 EFL Reading comprehension 5

1.2 Topic familiarity 6

1.2.1 Definition 6

1.2.2 Topic familiarity in EFL reading comprehension 7

1.2.3 The influences of topic familiarity and schemata on EFL reading comprehension 10

1.2.4 Research on effects of topic familiarity on reading comprehension 10

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 14

2.1 Participants 14

2.2 Data collection instruments 14

2.3 Procedure 17

2.4 Data analysis techniques 19

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND FINDINGS 211

3.1.Familiar topic vs unfamiliar topic 211

3.2.1 Pre-tests on 2 different topics 222

3.2.2 Students‟ improvement after treatments 266

3.3 Activating topic familiarity and its effect in learning and teaching reading in the research context 288

CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATION FOR TEACHING READING SKILL 322

PART C CONCLUSION 366

1 The findings 366

2 Implications 377

3 The research‟s limitation 377

4 Suggestions for further researches 377

REFERENCES 39 APPENDIXES

Appendix 1 Placement test I Appendix 2 Questionnaire X Appendix 3 Interview questions XII Appendix 4 Reading comprehension tests XIII

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

CTV: College of Television

L1: The first language

L2: The second language

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

Page

Table 4: Descriptive statistics for reading tests 24

Table 6: Performance in 2 tests by different proficiency level groups

Table 7: Pretest- posttest descriptive statistics

Table 8: Paired sample pre-posttest results

Chart 1: Research procedure

25

28

28

20

Chart 2: Higher level group‟s performance in 2 pretests 26

Chart 3: Lower level group‟s performance in 2 pretests 27

Chart 4: Forms usually used to activate students' background knowledge 28

Chart 5: Students‟ performance of pre- reading activities understandability 29

Chart 6: Students‟ evaluation on pre-reading activities effectiveness 30

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the study

Reading is generally considered as one of the most important skills in learning a foreign language Noor, N M (2006) has stated that “In any academic or higher learning context, reading is perceived as the most prominent academic skill for university students” It is also perceived as a hard and multivariate skill because it requires readers both rich background knowledge of the given topic and the efficient knowledge of the language in order to read effectively (Grabe, 1997)

It is agreed by many experts that EFL reading comprehension is affected by different variables (such as students‟ level, their motivation or anxiety, etc.) Among them, passage content or topic familiarity can be considered as the most influential factor Researches have proved that prior knowledge of the reading text‟s content may affect both first language (L1) and second language (L2) reading comprehension As Aebersold, J A and Field, M L (1997) point out if the topic is outside of readers‟ experience or base of knowledge; they are adrift on an unknown sea It can be referred that reading about an unfamiliar topic is really a difficult work

For those reasons, many researches have been conducted to shed the light on the influential relationship between topic familiarity in particular (and schema theory in general) and reading comprehension (Carrell, 1987; Chen & Donin, 1997; Krekeler, 2006; Lesser, 2003; Shapiro, 2004; Tsui, 2002; Wu, 2005) These studies actually have great effect on understanding reading comprehension in both first and second language, and made it clear that understanding the role of topic familiarity in reading process gives insights into reasons why students may fail to comprehend text materials By this, English language educators can develop teaching methods, reading materials, testing and evaluation on teaching reading comprehension skill, to be more compatible with their learners, and then improve the teaching and learning results

To teachers at English Translation Department, the very new department of College of Television, developing a suitable and effective reading course for students

is very essential To achieve this, finding out influences of topic familiarity on students‟ reading comprehension competence is very necessary That is the reason why

the investigator as one of English teacher of the department conducted this study - A

study on the relationhip between topic familiarity and EFL reading comprehension performance of English Translation students of College of Television The aim of

the study is to find out how topic familiarity of reading materials affects students‟

comprehension, and how it is activated in the current teaching situation; thereby the research result and its implication can be applied to develop current reading materials

as well as teaching and learning reading skill in the College

2 Objectives of the study

The present study is conducted in order to examine and evaluate the effects of passage topic familiarity on L2 readers' comprehension among English Translation students of College of Television who learn English as a foreign language Besides, the factual situation in activating this type of schemata in CTV reading classes will be explored and evaluated to improve the current teaching reading methods and syllabus

To achieve mentioned objectives, the following research question guide the study:

comprehension performance?

3 Method of the study

To achieve the objectives as stated above, the study is conducted mainly with the

approach of a quasi- experimental research as a type of empirical study By this, a causal hypothesis about the influence of topic familiarity on ESL students‟ reading comprehension is tested by setting a comparison between their results on two reading comprehension tests, one is with a familiar topic and the other is with unfamiliar topic After that, the conductor manipulates some treatment, and then some comparisons between pretest and posttest will be made to make the point even clear The

experimental assignment to conditions is by means of administrator selection that is suitable to the conductor

The rational for using this method is that it may an effective way to integrate research and practice and give deeper understanding about the real educational situation that is put in the case in this study For most, the validity of research results can be ensured

For these reasons, the study‟s experiment is carried out under natural school conditions in the English Translation Department in College of Television with the aim to reinforce the practicality of the study Questionnaire and interview are used also

as additional tools to collect data

4 Significance of the study

In term of theory, this study will contribute some more interesting findings to schema theories – especially topic familiarity - in general and their role in EFL reading

comprehension

In term of practice, this study will play a role in increasing CTV English

teachers‟ understanding about the effect of topic familiarity on students reading comprehension performance and the factual situation on the way they activate it in their teaching reading skill From that, they can have insights into why students may fail to comprehend text material and apply those understanding in designing reading

syllabus, tests and evaluation as well

5 The scope of the research

Over few past decades, many researches have conducted to investigate effects

of schema in general and topic familiarity in particular on readers‟ comprehension and usability of documents Some researchers acknowledged the impacts by assessing the pre-existing knowledge of experimental subjects with respect to the experimental materials used in the studies In contrast, some others rarely controlled for the influences of topic familiarity in comparison with other factors affecting reading comprehension when they evaluated the comprehensibility

In this study, the investigator considers topic familiarity as one of many influential factors affecting the EFL students‟ performance of reading comprehension, besides readers‟ level, their anxiety, their motivation, or test types etc On the other hands, it contends that this factor needs to be either assessed or controlled for in teaching reading skill Results of the research are used to examined whether topic familiarity facilitates reading comprehension or not, and to what extent, and how it is currently activated in reading lessons of the college

The research is conducted on students of English Translation Department, College

of Television under a certain experimental environment; thus the result may be not true with other subjects in other condition

6 Design of the thesis

The study includes 3 main parts: Introduction, Development, and Conclusion apart from acknowledgment, abstract, table of contents and appendices

Significance, Scope & Design of the study

Chapter 1 - Literature review reviews some main related definitions and previous

researches on them In this chapter, brief terms used in this research are also distinguished

Chapter 2 - Methodology of the research includes 4 sub-parts: research

participants, data collection instruments, data analysis technique and procedure

Chapter 3 – Results and findings presents the results and findings drawn from the

data analysis

Chapter 4 – Discussion and implication mentions some further discussion about

the research‟s findings

research limitation and implications for further researches

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 EFL Reading comprehension

Reading is a very common skill to everyone foreign language learners It has been proved as a major source of comprehensible input and as the skill that many

serious language learners need to employ most

Many researchers agreed that reading is an interaction between the reader and the writer mediated through the text According to Day and Park (2005), reading is a meaning-making process in which readers use their mental activities in order to

construct meaning from the text In other words, they have to “draw meaning from the

printed page and interpret this information appropriately” (Grabe, 2002, p.9) Thus, in order to acquire the available information in the text, readers have to make a very active contribution to the text

The chief purpose of reading is to get the correct message implied in a text that

the writer intended for the reader to get (Nutall, 1996) To achieve this, readers need to

cover “exact, detailed, sequential perception and identification of letters, words, spelling patterns and large language units”(Goodman, 1967) Besides, they need to minimize dependence on visual detail" by utilizing background knowledge to make predictions and checking these against the text (Goodman, 1975, p12) Because of this,

it can be understood that reading is an interactive process involving the reader, the text, and the interaction between them with the aim to comprehend writer‟s message implied in the text

Reading comprehension is a complex process composed by many different skills Kennedy (1974, p.3) considers it as "the ability of an individual to recognize a visual form, associate the form with a sound and /or meaning he has learned in the past, and on the basis of past experience, understand and interpret its meaning" Nassaji (2003, p.261) confirms that reading is not a single-factor process but a multivariate skill involving a complex combination and integration of a variety of cognitive, linguistic, and nonlinguistic skills

To complete this complex undertaking, a reader has to involve many levels of processing, two mains of which are bottom-up processing and top-down processing According to Treiman (1998), bottom-up processes are those that take in motivation from the outside world - letters and words for reading - and deal with that information with little input to higher-level knowledge It refers to the reader‟s receiving meaning from the letters and words of a text and reconstructing the implied message that way

In contrast, top-down processes refer to the reader‟s ability to look at a text as a whole and to connect and relate it to his existing knowledge base Treiman (1998) believes that with top-down processes, the reader‟s uptake of information is guided by his individual prior knowledge and expectations These two approaches mainly vary in the emphasis given to text-based variables such as vocabulary, syntax, and grammatical structure and reader-based variables such as the reader's background knowledge, cognitive development, strategy use, interest, and purpose (Lally, C.G., 1998) However, both of them are very necessary to obtain a message from a text, and they work together to confirm the accurate and rapid processing of information in most situations in this process too

For many EFL readers, reading comprehension is actually a hard multivariate skill because it is not merely a receptive process of gathering information from the page in a word-by-word manner, but it is rather a selective process and characterized as an active

process of comprehending (Grabe, W 1991) Bernhardt (2005) asserted that in L2 reading

process, the reader involves in the construction of meaning from a text, based partly on information presented by that text and partly on his prior knowledge, feelings and

opinions to make sense of the printed words In other words, reading comprehension

process occurs when readers construct the text based on their knowledge of the reading task, their knowledge of the target language, and their knowledge about the world (Grabe, 2009).Therefore, it can be inferred that background knowledge including topic familiarity really plays an important role in EFL readers‟ comprehension

1.2 Topic familiarity

1.2.1 Definition

Topic familiarity is background knowledge or prior knowledge that readers have already got about the subject matter of the reading text and their “ability to draw on their existing world knowledge about the topic” (Long, D R., 1989) When reading a text in a familiar topic, readers use their prior knowledge related to the text content to decode ambiguous messages or fill in the gaps when information in the text is not explicitly stated (Alderson, 2000) Therefore, it can be said that topic familiarity helps readers to contextualize textual ideas and facilitates their comprehension

Researchers in both first language and second language acquisition have investigated the significant role of readers‟ topic familiarity in reading outcomes (Carrell, 1987; Shapiro, 2004; Tsui, 2002; Wu, 2005) They mostly show that students reading about familiar topics comprehend and recall more important and correct textual information better than those who are unfamiliar with the content of the text This result indicates that topic familiarity has a positive effect on readers‟ comprehension It has even been argued that with the help of topic familiarity, “readers at a lower level of second language proficiency could perform better than, or at least as well as, readers at a higher level of language proficiency” (Tsui, 2002, p 29)

1.2.2 Topic familarity in EFL reading comprehension

To get a profound understanding about the term topic familiarity and its relationship with reading comprehension, it is essential to get knowledge of schema theory which were related to knowledge stored in reader memories It is considered as

a “building blocks of cognition” ( Rumelhart, 1980) which “reflect the experiences, conceptual understanding, attitudes, values, skills and strategies… (we)

bring to a text situation” (Vocca and Vocca, 1999, p 15) Schema theories were firstly

introduced into psychology and education through the work of the British psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett in 1932 and then further developed by Richard Anderson – anAmerican educational psychologist in 1970s After that, they were quickly applied in educational studies, especially for understanding the EFL reading process

Definition of schemata

According to Widdowson (1983), schemata are cognitive constructs which allow for the organization of information in long-term memory They are activated by “the mind, and stimulated by key words or phrases in the text or by the context” (Cook,

1989) They believe that schemata covers the knowledge of the world, from everyday

knowledge to very specialized knowledge, knowledge of language structures, and knowledge of texts and forms they take in terms of genre, and organization Therefore,

it can be stated that schemata allow us to relate incoming information to already

known information

Besides allowing organizing information and knowledge economically, schemata also allow us to predict the continuation of both spoken and written discourse Thereby, it is the fact that researches on the theory of schema have had a great impact

on reading comprehension as well as on studying teaching English As Cook (1997)

puts it, schema theory can help explain students‟ comprehension problems and suggest the kind of background knowledge they need

In L2 reading research, the schema theory focuses on both the content and the structure of a text (Carrell, 1984; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983) It emphasizes that reading comprehension is an interactive process between the reader‟s prior background knowledge and the text According to the theory, EFL readers‟ reading comprehension

is not only due to how easy or difficult a text is for them but more depends on the extent of readers‟ recall from their background knowledge and from the contextual clues (Carrell, 1987; Floyd & Carrell, 1987)

Schema theory is related to top-down reading processing, which allows readers

to make predictions about the reading text and helps them to fill in the gaps when ideas are not explicitly stated in the text (Alderson, 2000; Hudson, 1988; Tsui, 2002) In this way, a schema assists readers to draw inferences and to guess meanings of those unclear or ambiguous messages from the text Therefore, the appropriate schema compensates for readers‟ insufficient linguistic knowledge because those unknown messages can be inferred and decoded (Carrell & Wise, 1998) Thus, it may be possible that readers at a lower level of language proficiency could perform either as

well as or better than readers at a higher level of language proficiency, given the correct background knowledge (Leeser, 2003)

Types of schemata

According to Carrell (1987), schemata can be classified into two categories: formal schema and content schema, and both of them are necessary for any readers to fully understand a text or complete a testing task well

Formal schema is the knowledge of discourse or rhetorical organization of the text It comprises knowledge of different text types and genres, and includes the understanding that language structures, vocabulary, grammar, level of formality are used differently in different types of texts (e.g., differences in the structures of letters and advertisements)

Content schema is the reader‟s background knowledge associated with the text that a reader brings to it (Alptekin, 2003; Singhal, 1998; Stott, 2001) It refers to a reader's background or world knowledge, provides them with a foundation, a basis for comparison (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983; Carrell, Pharis, & Liberto, 1989)

Topic familiarity vs content familiarity

These two terms sometimes make readers confuse when they read about passage familiarity and schemata In fact, topic familiarity and content familiarity are intimately related to each other and even used as identical terms in many studies Content familiarity refers to the knowledge that may or may not be relevant to the content of a particular text or background knowledge of the messages delivered in the text content; on the other hand, topic familiarity is directly related to readers‟ familiarity with

the subject matter of the text (Alderson, 2000)

According to Brown (2001), content schema includes what we know about

people, the world, culture, and the universe those as we call topic Carrell (1998) also

agrees that content schema contains general or specific information on a given topic

Thus, it can be inferred that the two concepts topic familiarity and passage content

familiarity are nearly the same

Because of this very close interrelation between these two terms, in this research, the term of “topic familiarity” is used with identical characteristics and influences on

reading comprehension with “content schema”

1.2.3 The influences of topic familiarity and schemata on EFL reading comprehension

A number of studies have provided empirical evidence to support the notion that topic familiarity can be an influential factor to both L1 and L2 reading

Chang (2006) pointed out that while reading comprehension was motivated by both linguistic difficulty and topic familiarity, inferring was only facilitated by topic familiarity Correspondently, Pulido (2004) proved that readers‟ familiarity with the topics of the reading tasks caused better comprehension of the texts He also showed that the participants scored considerably higher on familiar topic than the new topic Many other researchers agreed that this non-decoding variable affected reading comprehension much more than readers‟ language proficiency (Hudson, 1988; Shapiro, 2004) It was even used to explain the differences between L1 and L2 reading that “L2 readers who are not familiar with content schema or do not process appropriate L2 sociocultural knowledge will have comprehension difficulties in that they cannot perceive the L2 text in a culturally authentic way” (Erler and Finkbeiner, 2007) Hudson (1988) added that one of the L2 reading problems lied in the lack of activating the appropriate schema With the wrong schema in mind, the reader would distort the text‟s meaning and find reading to be a difficult

With the evidence that new information is learned and remembered the most when it is connected to related prior knowledge, activating the appropriate schema that fits the text is expected to be indispensible in the reading comprehension process In other words, it can be said that background knowledge facilitates reading and has a considerable impact on reading comprehension

1.2.4 Research on effects of topic familiarity on reading comprehension

From the above discussion, it is evident that topic familiarity (or schemata in general) and reading comprehension have a considerable interactional relationship

Limited schemata may result in the readers‟ limited reading comprehension "If the topic [ ] is outside of their experience or base of knowledge, they are a drift on an unknown sea" (Aebersold & Field 1997, p 41) When confronting with such unfamiliar topics, some readers may overcompensate for absent schemata by reading

in a slow, text-bound manner; other students may overcompensate by wild guessing (Carrell 1988, p101) It means that an L2 reader who is not familiar with culturally based knowledge or content schema, or a reader who does not acquire the same linguistic base as the L1 reader will face up with difficulties That is the reasons why

there are many studies conducted to shed the light to this co-relationship

A study carried out by Koh (1986) to show the impacts of familiar content on student‟s reading comprehension supported the notion that one‟s comprehension of a text depends on how much relevant prior knowledge the reader has about the subject matter of that particular text Walter, K and Dijk, V (1978) in their study on text comprehension and the mental processes occurring in reading comprehension concluded that familiarity might have effects on comprehension both at the level of processing of the construction of a

coherent text and at other higher processing levels Research by Johnson (1982) also

pointed out that a text on a familiar topic was better recalled than a similar text on an unfamiliar topic Having agreed with this argument, Swale (1990, p 87) stated that when

content and form are familiar with readers, the texts will be relatively accessible

In his study to examine the role of background knowledge in L2 reading assessment by ESL students, Hudson (1988) investigated a group of 93 ESL students studying in America They were divided into two groups: the experimental group being taught relevant knowledge before the reading assessment whilst the control group receiving no instruction After reading, students were required to take a 10-question multiple-choice test The results showed that students with low or intermediate language proficiency got higher score after having received prior knowledge instruction In contrast, the effect was not significant among proficient students It also proved that activating correct background knowledge seems helpful in improving reading comprehension performance of EFL students

Tierney (1983) in his study also proved the connection between topic familiarity and comprehension as well He discovered that when readers were familiar with the topic, they were better able to recall information and think critically Many other studies like Carrell, (1981); Johnson (1982); Shimoda, (1989) showed the similar findings in reading comprehension performance All of them found a considerable link between comprehension and topic familiarity that participants better comprehended and/or remembered passages that were more familiar to them Further evidence from such studies also suggested readers' schemata for content affected comprehension and remembering more than did their formal schemata for text organization

However, some other studies also showed the limited effect of topic familiarity

on reading comprehension Yazdanpanah (2007) did not find a significant relationship between text topic familiarity and gender on reading comprehension performance when investigating the interaction of a reading comprehension test‟s result with test- doers‟ gender The findings showed that females were significantly better at handling both types of reading processes (top-down and bottom-up) in comparison to males, and sex differences in reading comprehension tests were affected by what was tested rather than text topic

In a study of students‟ academic English reading proficiency, Clapham (1996) found a stronger effect of language proficiency on students‟ comprehension than background knowledge Whereas poor language proficiency prevented her respondents from compensating for their lack of understanding by using an appropriate strategy, the linguistically proficient readers in her sample could “compensate for a certain lack of background knowledge by making full use of their language resources” (Clapham, 1996, p 196)

Peretz and Shoham (1990) conducted a study on 177 Israeli students from humanities and sciences fields to determine whether ESL students‟ reading comprehension performance was modified if the reading topic was related to the field of study with which they were familiar The research‟s result showed that there was a non-significant relationship between topic familiarity and students‟ performance because the science students scored higher on topics with the passage in their unfamiliar topic They

explained that science students might have higher language proficiency that influenced the scores more than their domain-specific knowledge

It can be seen that there are number of research conducted to find out the effect of schema and topic familiarity on reading comprehension However, their findings haven‟t reached a complete agreement on the impact of topic familiarity on reading comprehension performance of different studied readers Besides, the majority of researches in this area focus on investigating the influence of formal schemata, cultural schemata or schemata combining with age, gender or other factors on reading comprehension; very few ones study on effects of topic familiarity on reading comprehension performance as an independent factor Moreover, very few of them evaluate the activation of topic familiarity in practical reading lessons as well as suggest some ways to EFL teachers to improve it in their teaching This unsolved hypothesis clearly points to the need for more in-depth research into the contribution of topic familiarity to reading comprehension The present study serves as one-step in that direction with an empirical approach

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

is study is a research conducted in the English Translation department in College

of Television The aim of the research is to explore the influential relationship between topic familiarity and EFL reading comprehension performance from the perspective of schema theory The study‟s experiment is carried out under natural school conditions because it is the situation which has already existed in the real world and was more representative of the conditions found in educational contexts Besides, a questionnaire and an interview are used additionally to collect participants‟ information and their ideas about teaching and learning reading skill and that in the influential relationship with topic familiarity as well All of these data are used to answer the second research question

2.1 Participants

The participants of this study include 82 male and female undergraduate English language students at the Department of English Translation at the College of Television They are all young (aged 19-21) and study in this department to achieve a bachelor‟s degree in English Language Translation They had been accepted into the department after a very competitive national university entrance exam At the time of the data collection, they had studied English for 7–9 years

To homogenize the participants, a reading subtest of PET (Oxford University Press) was used and the participants who scored between the range of one standard deviation below and above the mean were selected as the intermediate ones to participate in this study Based on the test scores, 65 among 82 students were chosen

to join in experimental activities of the research

2.2 Data collection instruments

Questionnaire

The questionnaire employed in the research includes 7 questions The first 6 questions are to ask about students‟ attitude about learning English in general and learning reading skill in particular In these questions, they are also asked about the way their reading lessons normally start (with or without teachers‟ activating students‟ background

knowledge) and their evaluation about effects of these activities These questions are adapted from Khanam, M et al (2014)

The final question is about topic familiarity Its aim is to help the researcher determine the topics as being familiar or unfamiliar to students, so that they can be administered as the reading comprehension passages In this question, 20 topics (that the investigator believes to be adaptable to the study needs and to cover the range of desired familiarity level are included and the participants are able to determine their level of familiarity with different topics based on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1(absolutely unfamiliar) to 5 (completely familiar) The result of this questionnaire is used to choose reading texts for the experiment

Comprehension assessment tasks

Results of some studies have concluded that the method of assessing reading comprehension influences how readers perform on a test of reading comprehension (Shohamy, 1984; Wolf, 1993) This being the case, readers' performance across two different reading-comprehension assessment tasks (i.e True-false questions, multiple choice questions ) is checked through two reading texts These reading texts are picked

up from Misson FCE course book (Express publishing) according to the result of the topic familiarity questionnaire The first passage includes details about jobs of a forecaster and the second mentions some information about Qigong as a type of therapy, its features and effectiveness as well In order to limit the influence of other variants besides the topic familiarity on students‟ reading comprehension, the conductors made efforts to choose passages that were equivalent as much as possible

in term of linguistic difficulty All factors related to the text difficulty level like text genre, text structure, number of words, sentence complexity, number of ideas, etc are taken into consideration based on the Flesch formular ( Flesch, 1984) Scoring “idea units” was based on the analysis of the propositions in the pausal units or breath groups - pauses on each end of it during normally paced oral reading as provided by Alderson (2000; p 231) Based on this method, the idea units of every text were listed

in details

Table 1 lists the passage length, total number of sentences, total number of embedded clauses, number of ideas and factors related to text difficulty The aim of including the above factors is to determine passage difficulty

Table 1: Text difficulty by passage

sentences

Number of embedded clauses

Number

of ideas

Weather forecasters‟ job

511 words

29 sentences

2 Text in unfamiliar topic: A

type of therapy: Qigong

552 words

25 sentences

A comparison of the two passages according to six factors indicates that the passages were almost identical in each of the categories It means that the difficulty level of the two passages is relatively similar The biggest difference between them belongs to their content and the topic they discuss, and it is the considerable factor, which influences students‟ reading comprehension performance in this study

Eight T-F questions and eight multiple-choice questions adapted from the presented comprehension tasks in the Misson FCE course book (Express publishing) are used for each study‟s reading comprehension test While adapting the multiple choice question items for the present study, the conductor follows Wolf‟s guidelines (1991) to assure that all items should be dependent on the text so that the reader always needs to read a passage in order to choose the correct answer Besides, some

of the items should be elaborated so that the reader could make inferences and that all the distracters in the multiple choice questions should be believable in order to prevent participants from immediately disregarding responses

The test result is then analyzed to find out the extent to which topic familiarity affect students‟ reading comprehension competence, or on the other word, it is used to

answer the research question “What is the relationship between topic familiarity and

EFL students’ reading comprehension performance?”

Interview

The researcher conducts a structured interview via email with 5 English teachers

of the College The interview questions are adapted from Khanam, M et al (2014) The aim of the interviews is to clarify how background knowledge and topic familiarity is being activated in reading lessons of the College and how these activities are effective The advantages of structured interview questions is that it is easy to replicate as a fixed set of closed questions are used, which are easy to quantify, so the reliability can be easy to be tested (McLeod, 2014) Besides, it saves time and is suitable to be conducted via email – a way to avoid respondents‟ confusing with sensitive questions

2.3 Procedure

Placement test

To have a homogenized group, a test of PET (Oxford University Press) was administered to 82 learners of the English Translation department, College of Television Out of this number, the scores of 65 participants were within the researcher‟s desirable limits – the score above the mean These participants were the actual participants of the study The result of the test is presented in table 2

Table 2: The result of preliminary test

questionnaire, the most familiar topic and the most unfamiliar topic were determined, and 2 compatible texts belong these 2 topic were chosen

Along with students, 5 English teachers were participated in the thesis too They were interviewed to give some information about their teaching reading skill, the way they activated students‟ schema before each lesson and how they evaluated the effectiveness of those activities For the convenience, interview questions and answers were sent via email

Pre-tests in familiar and unfamiliar topic texts

To make a comprehension test out of two chosen passages, a total of 16 questions were used (including 8 T-F questions and 8 Multiple-choice questions) These questions were adapted basing on designed questions in Mission FCE 2 course book and then evaluated regarding validity and reliability As for the content validity of the tests, they were verified by an expert in English Teaching (The supervisor of the research)

Then the reading comprehension tests were piloted in turn in order to be analyzed

as for the values of central tendency, dispersion, reliability and validity The validity of the tests was estimated through a factor analysis, of course, despite the insufficient number of the participants The trial test was conducted on a volunteer group of 15 College students who were intermediate students of the same institute with participants Finally, based on the results of the pilot test, the comprehension questions were revised

After that, the reading tasks would be piloted to the participants of the research in

a normal classroom context In this stage, students completed 2 pre-tests with 2 mentioned topics without any preparation before and no help from the teacher After reading each reading passages and taking some notes in 10 minutes, they are required

to use their first language to write down as many details about each passage as possible After the written recall assessments were handed in, comprehension tests are delivered to students The time allowance is 30 minutes for each test

Treatments

2 weeks later, the conductor, as well the teacher in the context, started to indirectly

provide students with some background knowledge about “Medicine – Qigong” – the unfamiliarity topic in the study The treatment included 3 activities: providing some

vocabulary about the topic Medicine through a warm- up game, watching a TV show about Qigong, and holding a class discussion about the topic This treatment was

talk-carried out in 3 different reading lessons as additional activities with about 10 minutes for each of them

Posttest

After those lessons, the posttest on the unfamiliar topic text was handed-out Its result was then compared with that of the pretest to check the hypothesis about the

facilitative effect of topic familiarity on students‟ reading comprehension

After all, the data collected from all above instruments would be analyzed carefully, and based on that some findings and recommendations would be drawn out

To sum up, the research procedure can be presented briefly as the chart below:

Chart 1: Research procedure

2.4 Data analysis techniques

Two methods of analysis, qualitative and quantitative, were undertaken in this

thesis According to Creswell & Plano Clark (2011), the mixed method can lead the results to more powerful generalization without being restricted to the types of data collection and analysis typically associated with either qualitative or quantitative method alone Using both types of data is believed to broaden the research analysis, provide more comprehensive evidence and therefore strengthen the results

Firstly, to find out the familiar topic and unfamiliar topic, the data collected from students‟ questionnaire were calculated quantitatively The maximum point each topic gets was 325, and the minimum was 65 points The topic items which were scored above 195 out of 325 (mostly ranked 4 or 5 on the Likert scale) were identified as being familiar The ones scored less than 195 (mostly ranked 1 or 2 on the scale) were identified as being unfamiliar The topic received the lowest point (and the smallest percentage as well) would be determined as the most unfamiliar topic while the one that got the highest points (and the highest percentage as well) would be the most familiar topic

In order to evaluate the effect of topic familiarity on students‟ reading comprehension, the scores from two pre tests and pre-post tests were analysed quantitially Paired t-test statistic method was carried out between 2 pretests‟ results to find out if there was a significant difference between students‟ reading comprehension with familiar topic and that with an unfamiliar topic This method was also applied to compare the results of the pretest and that of the posttest to explore students‟ improvement after receiving some treatments from the teacher Some comparisons on the mean score and standard deviation of each test were also utilized to give some further implications These analyses indicated whether topic familiarity supported learners to better comprehend the reading text, and to what extent, and how teacher‟s treatment on topic familiarity facilitates students‟ reading comprehension

performance

In order to answer the second research question, answers of students in questionnaire and teachers‟ opinion in an open-ended interview were analysed both qualitatively and quantitially

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND FINDINGS

The main purpose of this chapter is to analyze the collected data so that the difference in students‟ results of reading comprehension tests when they confronted with familiar versus unfamiliar topics would be examined, their improvement after receiving teacher‟s treatment would be discovered and the factual situation in using pre-reading activities to activate students‟ background knowledge could be revealed From those, these following research questions would be shed in light:

Research Questions

comprehension perfomance?

3.1 Familiar topic vs unfamiliar topic

The topic familiarity was assessed by a 20-item Likert-scale questionnaire Participants rated on a scale of 1–5 their level of familiarity with 20 specific topics The results were presented in details in the table below:

Table 3: Topic familiar questionnaire’s result

No

score

Mean Rank

14 Places: Winter in Venice 165 2,54 13

Based on the result of the questionnaire, topic 1 “Television jobs: Weather

forecasters’ job” gets the total score of 255 out of 325 – the highest total score out of

20 topics Besides, its mean score is also the highest 3.92 It means that most students score this topic 4 (moderately familiar) or 5 (extremely familiar) in the topic familiarity scale, so it is the most familiar topic to surveyed students Whereas, topic

18 “Medicine: A type of therapy – Qigong” is totally scored only 109 out of 325- the

lowest score among all Its mean score is only 1.68, it indicates that most of students score it 1 (absolutely unfamiliar) or 2 (slightly familiar) Therefore, it is the most unfamiliar topic in this research

That the participants feel more familiar with the topic about television jobs is understandable because they learn in the College of Television and are training to work in this field in the future Besides, the materials about television and related work

is quite various in their learning course as well, this enriches their schema about this

topic Meanwhile, Medicine is not their specialty, so it is such an unfamiliar topic with

them, especially when it mentions about a type of therapy This may raise an implication that teachers should bear in mind about some features of students to delineate familiar topic area and unfamiliar topic area to them; thereby, they can choose compatible texts for practices or tests

3.2 Relationship between topic familiarity and students’ reading comprehension

3.2.1 Pre-tests on 2 different topics

Students were required to do 2 reading tests with their perceived unfamiliar vs familiar topic in the same time allowance and the same classroom context The

difficult level of each test was determined as almost equivalent to each other

However, there was a big gap between their comprehension performances in each test

Table 4: Descriptive statistics for reading tests

As shown in table 3, the mean score of the test with familiar topic text (test 1) is 65.5; meanwhile, that of the test with unfamiliar topic text (test 2) is only 41.1 This shows that the mean score of familiar topic test is higher than that of its counterpart Besides, students‟ minimum score and maximum score in test 1 are also much higher than those of their test 2 (93 compared to 50, and 68 compared to 16) Therefore, it can

be concluded that students did better in the test with their familiar topic than in the test with unfamiliar topic, and topic familiarity is a resource for them to comprehend the text more effectively One more thing to note is that the standard deviation (SD) of test

1 is 11.50 while that of test 2 is 11.87 It means that there is much more variation among subjects‟ performance in test 2 compared with that of test 1 It can be inferred that the reading test using an unfamiliar topic text is able to differentiate students‟ proficiency level more effectively rather than the one using a familiar topic

In order to indicate whether the difference among the participants‟ means of test

1 and test 2 is statistically significant, a paired t-test was employed Table 4 below presents the paired samples t-test and the difference between the mean of the two tests

Table 5: Paired sample pre-tests

As can be seen in table 5, the t-observed 7.3 is much greater than the t-critical 1.99 with the degree of freedom (df) 64 It proved that the difference between the mean of participants in test 1 and test 2 is statistically significant It means the students performed better in test 1 than in test 2, and it is clear that topic familiarity has facilitated them to comprehend the text more effectively

With the aim to examine the influential role of topic familiarity on reading comprehension of students in different levels of language proficiency, the conductor compared the difference between the deviations of 2 scores of 2 groups, a higher language proficiency group and lower language proficiency group The level of students is determined based on their results in the preliminary test in the beginning of the research The higher level group of students includes 21 students who gained 80 point or above in the test The other group includes 20 students scoring from 50 to 70 point The descriptive statistics presented in table 7 shows the differences between the comprehension scores of these two groups

Table 6: Performance in 2 tests by different proficiency level groups

students

Mean score of test 1

Mean score of test 2

As shown in Table 7, there are significant differences between the performances

of 2 groups The mean scores of both reading tests in higher level students are much higher than that of their counterpart (80 point compared to 57 point in test 1 and 51 point compared to 36.7 point in test 2 respectively) It indicates that the high-ability students performed significantly better than the lower level group in both tests

Table 7 also shows that students of both groups performed better in the test using the familiar text than in the test using the unfamiliar text However, the difference between scores of 2 tests in the high- ability students are shown to be less significant than the deviation between 2 test scores of the lower ability group This difference would be presented clearer in Chart 2 and Chart 3

Chart 2: Higher level group’s performance in 2 pretests

Chart 3: Lower level group’s performance in 2 pretests

These two figures describe the difference between the results of each student among two groups in 2 pretests Each line in the charts present the result of test 1 (the above line) and test 2 (the below line) of the two compared groups In chart 2, the two lines are quite monotonous, whilst the two lines in chart 3 look more rough, especially the line of test 2 This shows that the deviation between scores of high ability students

in each test is lower than that of the low ability group Besides, two lines in chart 2 quite close to each other; meanwhile, the lines are far away from each other in chart 3 Therefore, it can be interpreted that the deviation between two scores of each one in high-level group is lower than that of low-level group (mean of difference between 2 tests in the former group is 27 points compared to that of later group 30.5) This means

the deviation of low ability in unfamiliar test is considerable It can be inferred that the influence of topic familiarity on students‟ performance is different by their levels of language proficiency Students at lower level tend to be influenced by unfamiliarity much more than the ones at a higher level

To sum up, the considerable difference existing between the two performances of students proved the hypothesis that topic familiarity does affect students reading comprehension proficiency to some extent Students are likely to comprehend a text in their familiar topic better than one in an unfamiliar schema Besides, this influence is

proficiency students are, the higher extent topic familiarity facilitates their reading comprehension

Now a question might be posed that whether teachers could do something to control the impact of topic familiarity on their students‟ reading comprehension performance, and if through activities they provide in reading classes, they can activate and enrich their students‟ familiarity in order to improve their students‟ result To find the adequate for these questions, a treatment was initiated and then its effectiveness was evaluated to explore the role of teachers and their pre-reading activities on students‟ reading comprehension improvement The next part will present the results and findings of this experiment

3.2.2 Students’ improvement after treatments

With the aim to check whether students can perform better in reading tests after being providing background knowledge about the text topic, and to examine the effectiveness of teacher‟s activating prior knowledge on students, students joined in some additional activities that providing background knowledge about Medicine-Qigong After that, they did the posttest and their performance was evaluated in the comparison with the result of the pretest The result showed that all students performed better in the posttest after being providing and enhancing background knowledge about the unfamiliar topic Descriptive statistics for the application of the results of students‟ pretest and posttest are presented in table 8

Table 7: Pretest-posttest descriptive statistics

As shown in the table, the mean score of the posttest is 57.9, noticeably higher than that of the pretest 41.1 Besides, both minimum and maximum score of the posttest are considerably higher than its counterpart in the pretest (39 compares to 16, and 77 compares to 68 respectively) This increase in the amount of the students‟ performance supported the effect of the teacher‟s treatment on topic familiarity A paired sample t-test was employed to examine the statistical significance of the difference among the participants‟ means of pretest and posttest

Table 8: Paired sample pre-posttest result

As can be seen in the table, the t observed 5.8 is much higher than the t-critical

1.99 with the df 64 It confirms the statistical significance of the difference between

the two means In other words, it proves that students performed better in the posttest than in the pretest, and teacher‟s pre-reading activities conducted to activate students‟ topic familiarity was considerably effective in improving students‟ performance This finding supported the notion that students would be able to better comprehend the text

of teachers in improving students‟ reading comprehension performance by activating their background knowledge about the topic

Because of this reason, the next section of the research will shed the light on how topic familiarity was normally activated in reading classes of College of Television