The Role of Given Information on the Speed of the Comprehension of Context and Noncontext based Information in EFL Learners

Kavramanın ikinci d il öğrenimi ve edin imi sürecindeki önemi neredeyse tüm güncel kuramlarda Kabul edilmiştir. Bu araştırma, eski bilginin kavrama üzerindeki etkisini cümleleri anlama üzerindeki önemli rolünü vurgulayarak sunmaktadır. Bu doğrultuda, ana dili Farsça olan 80 İngilizce (yabancı dil olara k) öğrencisi seçilmiştir. He r biri 20 tane cümle içeren (10 öncül ve 10 dolaylı öncül) iki liste kullan ılmıştır. Öğrenc ile r kırkar kişilik rastgele seçilmiş iki gruba ayrılmıştır. Her bir gruba birer liste gösterilmiştir, ve cü mle leri gösterirlen bir bilgisayar program ku llan ılmıştır. He r birinin etkisini sorgulayabilme k iç in, bilgisayar vasıtası ile cümle ikilile rin in kavran ma zamanı ölçülmüştür. Veri çö zü mlemesi gösterme ktedir ki verilmiş bilginin varlığı, yeni bilgin in daha hızlı kavran masında güçlü bir etkiye sahiptir.

The significance of comprehension in the process of second language learning/ acquisition seems to be admitted in almost all current theories. The present research studies the impact of given informat ion on comprehension, suggesting its important role in sentence understanding. In order to achieve this goal, a group of 80 Persian - speaking university learners of English (as a foreign language) were selected. „Direct Antecedent‟ pairs sentences and „Indirect Antecedent‟ pairs sentences were used in two lists, each containing 20 sentences - 10 Direct and 10 Indirect Antecedent pairs. The subjects were divided randomly into two groups of 40. Each group was presented with one list. For presenting the sentences, a computer program was used. In order to investigate the effect of each presentation, through using the computer, we measured the taken time for comprehending the pairs. The analysis of data suggests that the presence of given information has a powerful effect on subjects‟ faster comprehension of new information.

PDF

___

Carpenter, P. A., & Just, M. A. (1980). A theory of reading – from eye fixation to comprehension. Psychological Review, 87, 329-354.

Clark, H. H., & Haviland, S. E. (1977). Comprehension and the given-new contract. In R.O.Freedle (Ed.), Discourse production and comprehension (pp. 1-40). Norwood: Ablex.

Dooling, D., & Christiaansen, R. (1977). Episodic and semantic aspects of memory for prose. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 3, 428-436.

Haliday, M. A. K. (1985). The linguistic sciences and language teaching. London: Longman.

Haliday, M. A. K. & Hasan, R. (1985). Language, text and context. Geelaond, Vic.: Deakin University Press.

Jia, L. P. (2007). The given-new distinction and cognitive reading. US-China Foreign Language, 5, 58-61.

Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Ouafeu, Y. T. S. (2007). Intonational marking of new and given information in Cameroon English. Journal of English World-Wide, 28, 187-199.

Sanford, A. J., & Garrod, S. C. (1981). Understanding written language: Explorations of comprehension beyond the sentence. New York: Wiley.

Welts, D. R. (2002). The new/given index: A measure to explore, evaluate, and monitore Discourse in educational conferencing applications. University of Massachusetts Amherst.