The Effect of Cultural Schematic Information on English Language Students Performance in Reading Comprehension Class

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of cultural schema and text content on EFL reading comprehension of English as a Foreign Language among undergraduate students. The research is applied to 120 second year students from the Departments of English, Colleges of Arts and Education, at the University of Basrah. The participants were equally distributed by institution and gender. That is, 60 students per college; 30 males and 30 females per group by using a quasi-experimental designed test combined with a descriptive questionnaire.

The experimental test involved two reading comprehension tasks that  concentrated on the theme of elections; the first of which is embedded in an Iraqi cultural context, whereas the other in an American cultural context. Each text was followed by an assessment of 15 items in order to measure the depth of comprehension. The statistical analysis showed that the learners’ preexisting cultural schema and background knowledge are significantly influence their reading performance. Additionally, the results indicated that independent variables, namely the place of residence, gender, and the period of internet and the consumption of television, had a serious part in shaping the students' access to the target culture knowledge. These results, moreover, suggest that the additional exposure and demographic factors are, specifically,  instrumental in developing the cognitive schema which is necessary for effective second language reading comprehension.