Background Knowledge, Linguistic Complexity, and Second-Language Reading Comprehension

“…school literacy practices (Aarts & Verhoeven, 1999; Connor, 1983; Leseman & de Jong, 1998; Pucci & Ulanoff, 1998), and language attitudes and cultural background (AbuRabia, 1995, 1996, 1998; Beech & Keys, 1997; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Jiménez, 2000) as they pertain to English reading outcomes.”

“This is the standard classification used to advance the empirical research base in the United States and in other countries (e.g., Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Hacquebord, 1994; Verhoeven, 1990, 2000).”

“…achievement, yet existing research indicates that language minority learners have difficulty reading with understanding (Carlisle & Beeman, 2000; Carlisle, Beeman, Davis, & Spharim, 1999; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Hutchinson, Whiteley, Smith, & Connors, 2003; Lindsey, Manis, & Bailey, 2003).”

“In turn, students’ language skills are intimately linked to their conceptual (background) knowledge and both are key predictors of reading comprehension outcomes (e.g., Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Jiménez, Garcia, & Pearson, 1996).”

“Studies in this area have been conducted with language minority learners spanning the primary grades through to middle school grades, and in multiple contexts including Turkish speakers acquiring Dutch in the Netherlands (Aarts & Verhoeven, 1999; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998, 2003; Verhoeven, 1990, 2000), Spanish speakers…”

“…an area of academic difficulty for ESL students, and that these children perform at significantly lower levels than their monolingual peers on measures of reading comprehension (e.g., Aarts & Verhoeven, 1999; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998, 2003; Garcı́a, 1991; Low & Siegel, 2005; Verhoeven, 1990, 2000).”

“…it has been well established that vocabulary is a key variable in the reading comprehension of secondlanguage learners (Aarts & Verhoeven, 1999; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998, 2003; Proctor et al., 2005, 2006; Verhoeven, 1990, 2000), most of past research looked into general vocabulary, rather than…”

“First, word frequency and sentence length have been found to significantly affect reading comprehension (e.g. Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; McGregor, 1989) and are used in many commonly adopted text readability formulas, such as the new Dale–Chall readability formula (Chall & Dale, 1995) and the Lexile…”

“Only a handful of studies (e.g., Aarts & Verhoeven, 1999; Carlisle, Beeman, Davis, & Spharim, 1999; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Garcia, 1991; Hutchinson, Whiteley, Smith, & Connors, 2003; Jimenez, Garcia, & Pearson, 1996; Lindsey, Manis, & Bailey, 2003; Verhoeven, 1990, 2000) have examined those…”

“Despite consistent findings of lower reading comprehension for language-minority students (Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Lervåg & Aukrust, 2010; Nakamoto, Lindsey, & Manis, 2007), the specific challenges they face are not clear.”

“…accounts of second language readers having slower reading rates in L2 than in L1 (e.g., Chen and Donin, 1997), lacking appropriate cultural schemata (e.g., Droop and Verhoeven, 1998), and scoring lower on L2 reading comprehension measures despite being strong L1 readers (e.g., Taillefer, 1996).”

“…Lipson, 1983; McNamara & Kintsch, 1996; Priebe et al., 2012; Recht & Leslie, 1988) and in L2 (Barry & Lazarte, 1995, 1998; Burgoyne et al., 2013; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Rydland et al., 2012), in this study science domain knowledge was found to be associated with reading comprehension…”

“…findings prove in the clearest way possible that a transfer of syntactic awareness skills from English L3 to both Arabic L1 and Hebrew L2 did occur, which is identical to the findings of others (Abu-Rabia & Sanitsky, 2010; Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2003; Dussias & Scaltz, 2008; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998).”

“Droop and Verhoeven (1998) conducted a similar study with a focus on reading comprehension.”

“There are three concepts 111 Published by SCHOLINK INC. (Barnitz, 2013; Droop & Verhoeven, 2013).”

“This study did not assess respondents' background knowledge about the four topics covered in the survey, which has been shown to facilitate reading comprehension (Dochy, Segers, & Buehl, 1999 ; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998 ; Durgunoglu & Oney, 2000; Johnson, 1981 ; Weber, 1991).”

“There are many studies that indicate the longstanding history of research that supports selected components of SREs (cf., Beck, McKeown, Sinatra, & Loxterman, 1991; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Englert, Tarrant, Mariage, & Oxer, 1994; Fisher, 1994; Palincsar & Brown, 1984).”

“This result is also in line with some studies which found that child NNSs performed significantly lower on reading comprehension measures than their native-speaking peers (e.g., Droop & Verhoeven, 1998, 2003; Lesaux et al., 2006; Lesaux et al., 2010; Verhoeven, 1990, 2000).”

“…empirical evidence to support the notion that topic familiarity can be an important factor affecting both L1 reading (Johnston, 1984; Recht & Leslie, 1988) and L2 reading (Brantmeier, 2005; Carrell, 1987; Chen & Graves, 1995; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Johnson, 1982; Krekeler, 2006; Malik, 1990).”

“Indeed, Droop and Verhoeven (1998) reported that L2 readers in third grade were able to utilize background knowledge to support comprehension when reading texts that were linguistically simple.”

“Despite the acknowledged relevance of text difficulty in reading (Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Jafarigohar & Khanjani, 2014), very little research has been conducted that analyze the linguistic complexity in reading materials and texts.”

“…reading proficiency in the second language on the basis of reading proficiency in the first (e.g., Calero-Breckheimer & Goetz, 1993; Carrell, 1991; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Garcia, 1998; Geva, Shany, & Himel, 1992; Saville-Troike, 1984); and (c) an apparently closer correlation between reading…”

“The results of this study, as well as that of Droop and Verhoeven (1998), suggest that specific properties of the task or proficiency in the language may modify the influence of cultural background knowledge, in terms of the direction of the effect (facilitatory or inhibitory), or its size.”

“Research has provided evidence for a substantial role of background knowledge in reading comprehension in a second language (Droop & Verhoeven, 1998), and it is evident that standardized language assessments are heavily influenced by dominant U.S culture.”

“That is to say the cultural information hidden in a text had a positive impact on reader's comprehension whether by recall, objective questions (Malik, 1990; Droop and Verhoeven, 1998; Johnson, 1981).”

“Background knowledge and topic familiarity have also been found to significantly contribute to skilled L2 reading comprehension (Barry & Lazarte, 1998; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Lee, 1986; Steffensen, Joag-Dev, & Anderson, 1979).”

“cultural background knowledge [25] were all proved to correlate with children’s L2 reading comprehension.”

“Lack of cultural knowledge has been shown to hamper reading and listening comprehension of young EL learners (for reviews, see Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Lesaux et al., 2010).”

“Once children learn the cultural schema of a particular community, they participate more fully because they understand the community’s underlying meanings (Carrell, 1987; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Drucker, 2003; Eskey, 2002).”

“The findings of previous studies also support the “facilitating effect of cultural familiarity” not only for reading comprehension but also for reading efficiency as well (Droop & Verhoeven, 1998, p. 253).”

“Another adjustment might be to adjust the influence of sentence length in secondary texts, where we found no differences in grades 7-12 and word complexity better predicts reading comprehension (Arya et al., 2011; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998).”

“More specifically, communication can be defined as a generic term covering all messages uttered in different contexts and situations (Macaulay, 2005; McGlone, 2005; Droop & Verhoeven, 2013).”

“Droop and Verhoeven (1998) concluded that cultural familiarity has a “facilitating effect on both reading comprehension and reading efficiency”.”

“Moreover, this relationship is found in both first (L1) and second language (L2) contexts (Droop & Verhoeven 1998, 2003; Proctor et al. 2005).”

“Eidswick (2010) argued that this could be related to the fact that the participants were not experienced with cooking yet.”

“In particular, cultural familiarity can significantly affect the development of reading ability and assessment results (Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Freimuth, 2008).”

“…even when decoding skills, reading fluency and phonological awareness abilities are comparable to native speakers (Aarts & Verhoeven, 1999; August & Shanahan, 2008, 2010; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998, 2003; Lesaux, Crosson, Kieffer & Pierce, 2010; Low & Siegel, 2005; Verhoeven, 1990, 2000).”

“impaired immigrant students’ reading comprehension ( Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Garci´a, 2000).”

“As the existing gaps were in cultural schemata, the cultural schemata were acquired with schooling and the gap was closed ( Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Garci´a, 2000).”

“Droop and Verhoeven [5] found that reading materials anchored in culturally familiar content enhanced second-language reading comprehension for young learners, especially when the text language was relatively simple; they believed that cultural familiarity provided background knowledge to reduce…”

“…been shown to be better at understanding what they are reading and being able to apply their higher-level thinking abilities to texts in their weaker language when the texts are culturally more familiar to them (Alptekin, 2006; Cho & Christ, 2022; Davoudi & Ramezani, 2014; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998).”

“…Snow, 2002; Woolley, 2011) are some internal factors while the cultural familiarity of the reader with the text (e.g., Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983; Droop & Verhoeven, 1998; Sabatin, 2013), the context, the text, and the teaching strategy applied by the teacher (Karami, 2021) are some of the…”

“Frekuensi kata dan panjang kalimat mempengaruhi secara signifikan pemahaman bacaan [7].”

“Similarly, Hacqueboard (1994, as cited in Shanahan & Beck, 2006) found that Turkish students learning Dutch were successfully able to answer global and conceptual level questions about text, as opposed to questions on micro-level information (e.g., words and clauses), suggesting that top-down processing was the main r…”

“Neither is the acknowledgment that readers read more and with better comprehension when engaged with text that represents their lives (Droop & Verhoeven, 1998).”