This study focused on the comprehension and cognitive processing of texts in biology by 36 graduate science students for whom Chinese was their first (L1) and English their second language (L2). The students in the study were from two disciplines: one in biology, and the other in engineering. These groups were subdivided into less proficient L2 (i.e., low-intermediate to intermediate) and more proficient L2 group (i.e., high-intermediate to high). From the perspective of a stratified model, the study examined L1 and L2 comprehension of general biology texts. Specifically, it investigated the effects of readers' domain-specific knowledge and language proficiency on various levels of discourse processing. It also examined two methodological issues: the effects of language of recall on processing of semantic and syntactic information from the L2 texts and the validity of using self-rating of text difficulty or content familiarity to index background knowledge. / Domain-specific knowledge was found to affect every aspect of comprehension of semantic information that was assessed in the study for both the L1 and the L2 texts. It also affected efficiency of processing for the L2 texts. Language proficiency, on the other hand, consistently affected lower-level processing. However, it appeared to have few concomitant effects on processing of semantic information. These results were consistent with predictions from stratified models of discourse comprehension in which processing of syntactic and semantic information are viewed as being both multilevel and modular. The results of the study also suggest the importance of investigating background knowledge in content-specific terms. Although the science students generally were comparable both in their knowledge of science text structures and in their patterns of comprehension of different types of semantic information, this comparability did not result in comparable comprehension. Rather, comprehension depended heavily on domain-specific knowledge. / With reference to linguistic distance, the results of this study suggest that caution is needed in applying conclusions drawn from studies of speakers of languages of the same Indo-European family to speakers of languages of greater linguistic distance such as Chinese and English. The lack of production effects observed in this study may be due to differential processing of syntactic information as well as differential processing strategies that many readers reported to have used with different language conditions. Finally, the general discrepancy between perceived text difficulty vs. comprehension and efficiency of processing as assessed by the objective measures suggests caution in using self-rating of text difficulty or content familiarity to index background knowledge.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.28710 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Chen, Qin, 1962- |
| Contributors | Donin, Janet (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001461560, proquestno: NN05687, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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