The present study examines the effects of schema activation and reading strategy use on L2 learners’ reading comprehension, strategy use, motivation, and learner beliefs. The participants consisted of 89 Korean college students, and they were assigned to one of two reading activity groups―schema building or reading strategy instruction―or to a control group. The study employed a background questionnaire, pre-, post-, and delayed English reading comprehension tests, and also pre- and post-reading strategy use, reading motivation, and general learner belief questionnaires. The results indicate that both the schema building and reading strategy task groups showed significant improvements in terms of immediate learning effects, but the reading strategy group showed an added degree of improvement over the schema building and control groups in terms of long-term reading comprehension. Additionally, the two task groups reported positive responses to their own use of reading strategies, motivation, and positive beliefs. Based on the findings, this study suggests pedagogical implications for L2 reading classrooms.

The present study attempts to make a link between eye movement measures and reading comprehension (RC) to further examine how reading span (RS) differences contribute to differences in L2 reading performance. The variability of text processing was measured by duration and frequency of fixations using an eye tracker. Thus, it investigates the effects of RS in terms of processing as well as RC performance. To this end, forty-five Korean undergraduate students at an intermediate level participated in the experiment. Four types of eye movements were tracked: first-fixation time (FFT), total-fixation time (TFT), secondfixation time (SFT), and fixation count (FC). The results showed that the high-RS group received higher scores than the low-RS group on the RC test, suggesting a significant role of RS in RC performance. In addition, significant differences between the RS groups were found in TFT and SFT. RC performance is negatively correlated with the TFT and SFT. Due to their limited RS, the low-RS group needed more time for comprehension and left few resources available for integration of meaning in the text. The findings suggest that fast and efficient EMs are closely associated with a better RC performance. The present study shed light on how RS affects the students’ text processing and that, in turn, leads them to different outcomes from the L2 reading comprehension tests.

The present study examined the comparative role of vocabulary and grammar in different test measures of L2 reading comprehension. A total of 83 students were asked to take three reading tests with a different technique each (multiple-choice, cloze, and recall), a vocabulary test, and a grammar test, and to respond to a questionnaire. The findings were as follows: 1) learners’ reading performance differed across the three reading test measures, and the two language variables exerted different influences in L2 reading as measured by the cloze test technique; and 2) concerning the comparative contribution of the two language variables to L2 reading comprehension according to learners’ L2 proficiency, the contribution was significant exclusively in the recall test, and it varied depending upon their L2 proficiency. This research demonstrates the importance of taking into account the type of test techniques in studies of the relative role of vocabulary and grammar knowledge in L2 reading.

This study attempted to investigate the relative contribution of vocabulary and grammatical knowledge to second language reading comprehension ability. With 44 EFL adult learners whose language proficiency fell within the low-intermediate level, three different measures were conducted: vocabulary and grammatical knowledge were measured by researcher-developed tests and L2 reading comprehension was measured using the reading section of the TOEIC test. In order to examine the two predicting variables (i.e., vocabulary and grammatical knowledge) a multiple regression analysis was performed. The study found that both grammatical and vocabulary knowledge related significantly to L2 reading comprehension. Additionally, vocabulary knowledge showed a slightly stronger contribution to reading comprehension than syntactic knowledge. These findings suggest that it is equally important for lower level readers to understand vocabulary as well as basic syntactic rules and structures when it comes to EFL reading comprehension.

A study was conducted to investigate the levels of representation in memory constructed as an outcome of L2 reading comprehension, and the effects of L2 proficiency, prior knowledge, and L1 reading skills on the construction of the representation. A total number of 128 Korean EFL learners participated in the study. Their L2 reading comprehension was tested through verification measure and comprehension questions designed to assess different levels of understanding including the sentence-level, textbase understanding and the situation model, or the deeper level of understanding of what the text is about. Results showed that the representation the L2 readers constructed was characterized as consisting of rather loose textbase understanding and relatively weak, but varying degrees of, situational understanding. Only L2 proficiency, among the three factors, appeared to have a significant effect on the levels of understanding in the representation the L2 readers constructed.

The aim of the present study is to explore the relative contribution of working memory capacity to second language reading comprehension of Korean college students in comparison with L1 reading comprehension ability, L2 vocabulary knowledge, and L2 grammatical knowledge. Further, it attempts to examine whether the role played by working memory span differs depending on the proficiency levels of L2 learners. The study was conducted with 78 L2 learners of English who were classified into two different groups―a low-proficiency and a high-proficiency group—according to their English proficiency levels. The results of a step-wise multiple regression analysis revealed that working memory capacity made a significant contribution to L2 reading comprehension of advanced users of English above and beyond other variables; working memory capacity alone explained around 37.9% of the variance in L2 reading comprehension. However, for the low-proficiency group, vocabulary knowledge explained a larger variance in L2 reading comprehension. The findings from the study suggest that as L2 learners become more competent users of English, working memory span emerges as a more direct predictor of L2 reading comprehension.

The research on the role of working memory in L1 and L2 reading comprehension has provided valuable insight on domain-general mechanisms at work in both comprehension processes. The present paper explains a construct of working memory as a multicomponent model (Baddeley, 2007; Baddeley & Hitsch, 1974), reviews empirical studies that investigated the impact of working memory in L1 and L2 reading comprehension, introduces a newly adopted construct to the model of working memory, episodic buffer or long-term working memory (Erricson & Kintsch, 1995), and discusses the role of background knowledge in relation to working memory. The review of the studies showed that central executive, an attentional control system, is a significant predictor for not only L1 reading but also L2 reading comprehension. Phonological loop, a storage system, is significantly related to central executive. However, it is not a direct significant predictor for L1 and L2 reading comprehension; instead, it explains significant variances of vocabulary acquisition in the beginning stage of language acquisition, which is a direct significant predictor for reading comprehension. How high vs. low working memory groups make use of their cognitive resources in L1 and L2 reading when provided with additional background knowledge is further discussed.

The study investigated the effects of text, task, and L2 reading ability on Korean college students’ English reading strategy use. The participants performed Word Translation, Theme Summarization, and Question Generation tasks while reading either narrative or expository passages. The strategy use was examined through a questionnaire and thinkaloud protocols. When investigated by the questionnaire, the students’ strategy use patterns were not very different between the two text type groups and between the two L2 reading ability groups. The task type seemed to affect the strategy use to some degree, but the difference was not extensive. Overall, a few particular strategies were used very often regardless of the text type, the task type and L2 reading ability. The results of the verbal protocols suggested that the task types affected the strategy use to some degree, but the influence was limited as was shown in the results of the questionnaire. Based on the findings of the study, pedagogical implications were presented.

The present study explores the effect of topic interest and knowledge on comprehension and their relationship in L2 reading. Given this issue has been studied almost exclusively with fluent L1 readers, it seems necessary to investigate the applicability of the findings from previous studies to L2 reading. In order to enhance the generalizability, the present study employed multiple texts and tasks. The subjects were 126 Korean adult EFL learners representing various academic backgrounds and wide range of English proficiency. Results showed that the effect of knowledge and interest on L2 reading comprehension varied greatly depending on task type, suggesting that any conclusion drawn about the effect of prior knowledge or interest on reading comprehension could be biased depending on the task used to assess the construct. In addition, knowledge of topic vocabulary was the most stable factor of reading comprehension regardless of text structure or measure of reading comprehension. The association between topic interest and topic knowledge proved very weak in general unlike in L1 reading, not supporting schema-theoretic views about the effect of topic interest and its relationship with topic knowledge. More results and discussions are presented along with the statement of limitations and implications both theoretical and practical.

본 연구는 요약 교육(Summarizing instruction) 및 연습(Practices)이 초급 수준의 L2 성인 학습자들의 읽기 이해와 쓰기에서의 어휘 사용에 어떠한 영향을 주는지를 연구하였다. 이를 위해 L2 학습에서 요약하기의 중요성 및 쓰기에서의 어휘 사용에 관한 이론을 바탕으로 본 연구의 의미를 살펴보았다. 연구 결과 연구에 참가한 학습자들은 요약 교육과 연습 이후 읽기이해 점수에서 의미 있는 향상을 보여주었고, 어휘쓰기에 있어서도 전체적으로 같은 단어의 반복이나 기초적인 단어(the 1st 1000) 보다는 다양하고 수준 높은, 즉, the 2nd 1000 list, 아카데믹한 단어(AWL), 및 그 이상 수준의 단어(NLW) 사용을 보여주고 있었다. 이러한 요약 교육 및 연습이 읽기 이해에 주는 긍정적 효과는 주제가 다른 읽기자료(reading source texts with different topics)를 바탕으로 한 상향식(bottom-up) 읽기 및 쓰기 유발(writing output-promoting)의 통합적인 요약단계에 있다고 보여 진다. 즉, 주어진 읽기자료를 요약하기 위해서 학습자들은 주요 단어, 구, 혹은 문장 수준의 이해를 하고, 이를 다시 본래의 텍스트보다 짧게 요약하기 위해 문장통합(sentence combination), 바꾸어 쓰기(paraphrasing), 통사적 변형(syntactic transformation), 그리고 만들어 내기(invention) 등의 요약 과정들(summarizing processes)에서 사전 사용 및 교사의 모델링과 피드백을 통하여 다양한 단어표현에 노출되고 경험하여 어휘 지식을 늘릴 수 있었고, 이후 쓰기에서의 어휘 사용에 도움을 준 것으로 보여 진다.