The Effects of Content Schema on Korean Middle School EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Despite numerous research studies concerning the role of content schema in reading comprehension, little is known about its exact contribution to different sub-types of reading comprehension: inferential and factual comprehension, and main idea and details comprehension. Moreover, the potential effects of general language proficiency and language learning backgrounds have been largely overlooked in the existing studies. Thus, this study investigated the effects of schema on these four different sub-types of reading comprehension abilities of Korean EFL learners, while controlling for the effects of English language proficiency, measured by vocabulary knowledge, and oversea experiences. One hundred seventy Korean middle school EFL students participated and were tested on specific content prior knowledge, and their performance on reading comprehension abilities that were sub-divided into inferential, factual, main idea, and detail comprehension was analyzed. The analyses not only revealed strong correlation among the examined variables, but also demonstrated that schema plays a significant predictive role in explaining reading comprehension, especially that in inferential comprehension and details retrieval. These findings have important pedagogical implications for building and activating appropriate content-related background knowledge for middle school EFL students in developing their English reading comprehension abilities.