The purpose of this study aims to investigate the effects of background knowledge on English reading comprehension.
It is well known that learners' background knowledge affects their reading comprehension abilities. When we read English context, we don't just decode or translate the letters. We try to understand what writer is saying. Therefore prior knowledge is important when we read English text.
To investigate the effectiveness of Background knowledge, 16 high school students whose reading abilities are low-level participated in this study. They were divided into the experimental and control group. Pre- and Post-test were taken to compare the differences of the scores between two groups. The experimental group was provided with background knowledge. In contrast, the control group was provided with vocabularies. For materials, I analyzed the English textbooks which are being used in high school. And I chose the two topics which are related to art and science in the textbooks. Using these topics I made 20 questions to evaluate the students' comprehension.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows;
First, to students who have low understanding on vacabulary and sentence structure, providing background knowledge affected students reading comprehension abilities.
Second, providing background knowledge was more effective than that of vocabulary.
This study was conducted to a small number of students in a short period. But the results seems to indicate that background knowledge considerably contributes to enhance reading comprehension ability.
Thus, I think teachers have to pay more attention to teaching background knowledge.