Embedded Clause Effects on Recall: Does High Prior Knowledge of Content Domain Overcome Syntactic Complexity in Students of Spanish?

Abstract

This study tested the effect of embedded clauses on recall for English‐speaking high school students reading Spanish historical texts. Twenty‐four students with high prior knowledge of Incan history and 24 with low prior knowledge read texts concerning the Incas. Three levels of syntactic complexity were defined: Level I (LI) contained the essential ideas for the topic; Level II (LII) embedded one clause with nonessential information within LI sentences; and Level III (LIII) embedded an additional clause within LII sentences. A significant decrease in the recall of the essential propositions occurred as the level of syntactic complexity increased. Readers with high prior knowledge recalled significantly more of the essential information for LI and LII. However, recall scores for the essential propositions in LIII were nearly equal to those for the low prior‐knowledge group. In conclusion, the study found that complexity of sentence structure seemed to cancel the advantage of previous exposure to the content domain.

Learner‐Based Factors in L2 Reading Comprehension and Processing Grammatical Form: Topic Familiarity and Working Memory

“…Significant findings were obtained for topic familiarity on all three dependent measures of comprehension, form recognition, and tense identification (Research Question 1). The results lend further support to previous research that possessing relevant background knowledge promotes better L2 reading comprehension (Barry & Lazarte, 1995;Bügel & Buunk, 1996;Carrell & Wise, 1998;Chen & Donin, 1997;Johnson, 1982;Lee, 1986). The contribution of the present study's findings is that topic familiarity can also promote learners' ability to make form-meaning connections, at least with Spanish future tense morphology.…”

“…The findings for the effects of topic familiarity on L2 reading comprehension have generally found a significant, positive effect for topic familiarity as either a main effect or as part of a complex interaction (Barry & Lazarte, 1995;Bügel & Buunk, 1996;Carrell & Wise, 1998;Chen & Donin, 1997;Johnson, 1982;Lee, 1986;Pulido, 2004); however, a few studies have not (Carrell, 1983;Hammadou, 1991;Peretz & Shoham, 1990). In a detailed review of these studies, Leeser (2003) attributed these contradictory findings to a number of methodological issues regarding the assessment of comprehension as well as to the operationalization of topic familiarity.…”

“…For example, studies differ in terms of comprehension assessment (i.e., true-false, multiple choice, short answer, recall protocol). In addition, only a few studies provide some kind of structural comparability between familiar and unfamiliar texts (Barry & Lazarte;Bügel & Buunk;Chen & Donin;Pulido, 2004), use more than one familiar and one unfamiliar passage topic to decrease the likelihood of a passage effect (Bügel & Buunk;Carrell & Wise, 1998;Chen & Donin, 1997;Pulido, 2004), or actually report learners' familiarity with chosen passage topics (Chen & Donin;Pulido, 2003Pulido, , 2004. In order to address some of these issues, the present study includes the use of two familiar and two unfamiliar topic passages, controls the passages for length as well as frequency and position of target forms, and reports learners' familiarity with topic passages using questionnaire data.…”

The Cultural Baggage of Second Language Reading: An Approach to Understanding the Practices and Perspectives of a Nonnative Product

“…In the past two decades, however, researchers began applying some of these findings to second language (L2) research, with results indicating that familiarity with the cultural content of a text (prior experience in the target culture as a native or nonnative member) can positively affect students' reading comprehension (Carrell, 1981;Hammadou, 1991;Johnson, 1982;Pritchard, 1990;Roller & Matambo, 1992;Steffensen, Joag-dev, Q Anderson, 1979). Based on these findings, other researchers investigated the effects of providing culturally specific background knowledge to students prior to their reading a foreign text (Barry & Lazarte, 1995Kim, 1995). These studies found that students with adequate instruction in the cultural content of a foreign text understand and recall more information from the text than those without any instructorguided preparation.…”

Role of Text Structure Awareness in the Recall of Expository Discourse

“…The literature includes considerable empirical evidence to support the role of linguistic knowledge in foreign language reading comprehension (Carrell, 1988;Clarke, 1988;Eskey, 1988). Similarly, the effect of background and cultural knowledge on foreign language reading comprehension is supported by a strong research base (Adams, 1982;Anderson, Reynolds, Schallert, & Goetz, 1977;Barry & Lazarte, 1995;Chen & Donin, 1997;Hudson, 1982;Johnson, 1982;Lee, 1986;Long, 1990;Omaggio Hadley, 1979;Taglieber, Johnson, & Yarbough, 1988).…”