Second-language text comprehension : knowledge and text type

The purpose of this study was to compare first- and second-language text comprehension across passage types.Results indicate that there was no main effect for language when the total texts were compared. In contrast, a large difference was found for the type of passage read. Significantly higher recall and inferencing were found on the passages for which subjects had prior knowledge, regardless of the language of presentation. Although global comprehension measures did not reveal differences in text processing, more detailed paragraph-level analyses indicated that text processing differences were present.Total reading times indicated that there was a large effect for the language in which the passage was read, with significantly longer reading times recorded for passages read in the second language.These findings were interpreted as an indication that second-language reading comprehension capacity is underestimated. The findings also suggest that the type of passage read influences text comprehension more than the language in which it is read