An investigation into the impact of cultural schema and reading activities on reading comprehension

ABSTRACT This study was carried out to investigate the influence of cultural schema and reading activities on reading comprehension. The impact of cultural schema was tested nativizing short stories to make them culturally more familiar. The study was carried out at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University with 3 rd grade students at the department of English Language Teaching through a 2X2 true- experimental research design where the participants were homogenously placed in different groups according to their Grade Point Averages (GPAs). The first group were given the original short story while the second group were given the nativized (Turkified) one. To find out the effect of reading activities on the comprehension of nativized and original short stories, the third group read the original short story with reading activities while the fourth group read the nativized short story with the same reading activities. Post-tests were administered. In both studies, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) on SPSS indicated that the treatment groups who received the nativized version of the short story, regardless of whether they received any reading activities or not, outperformed the other two treatment groups who received the original short story. This implied that cultural schema appears to have a significant effect on the comprehension of short stories. Nevertheless, the treatment groups who were supported with reading activities outperformed the others who did not do any reading activities, which indicated that the lack of cultural knowledge can be compensated for through the use of reading activities. This study concludes that cultural schema has a noticeable impact on reading. Therefore, it suggests teachers use nativized texts in reading classes in order to help readers to gain better comprehension. This study also suggests that readers' schemata be activated before reading. Finally, it points out that teachers are strongly recommended to give background knowledge about the topic if there is a lack of background knowledge among the students.