The Effects of Cultural Familiarity on Reading Comprehension and Attitudes Towards Reading English Short Stories Written by a Native Speaker and a Thai Author
DOI: 10.14456/jlapsu.2021.6
Keywords:
cultural familiarity, cultural schema, reading comprehension, English literature, local literature in EnglishAbstract
Literature is an integral part of language learning. Literary works written
by native speakers are the predominant reading materials for English-
major students in Thai universities while Thai literature written in English
is often overlooked. Based on the hypothesis that reading comprehension
of literary works requires cultural familiarity, this article reports on a quasi
-experimental study assessing the impact of cultural familiarity on reading
comprehension. In addition, this study also aimed to explore Thai English-
major students’ attitudes towards reading English short stories. Participants
of this study were thirty-five English-major students taking English literature
courses at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University. The
instruments were (1) two short stories with a comparable theme, linguistic
complexity and length but in different cultural contexts – one in an American
and the other in a Thai context, (2) a reading comprehension test from the
two texts, and (3) a questionnaire on the participants’ attitudes towards
reading the two texts. The findings showed that the culturally familiar
text resulted in significantly better literal, inferential and overall
comprehension. In addition, participants found that the Thai short
story surpassed the American short story in the aspects of authenticity,
ease of understanding and interest. Implications for selection of reading
materials are discussed.
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