The Effect of Topic Familiarity on EFL Lower-Intermediate-Level Learners Reading Comprehension Ability

The role of topic familiarity in reading comprehension practices continues to be revealing for the better understanding of the successful comprehension in second/foreign language reading texts. Existence of background knowledge in the mind of the reader to be activated during decoding/encoding process of reading would be an important factor which helps the reader to reach the higher degree of understanding of the content of texts. The present study investigated the effect of topic familiarity on reading comprehension ability of 32 male/female lower-intermediate-level EFL learners studying at a private institute who participated in this research voluntarily. The reading test was administered in two sessions. In each session, the subjects were provided with four passages; two passages with familiar daily topics and two other passages with unfamiliar odd topics, each of which in one paragraph length and followed by comprehension tests in multiple-choice format. Using inferential statistics and applying independent samples t-test, the researchers then investigated the (dis)approval of the null hypothesis proposed for the study. On the other hand, the participants were interviewed and their opinions about topics and passages were recorded. The results showed that learners overall comprehension was significantly better on reading comprehension tests with familiar topics compared to their performance on those with unfamiliar topics. In sum, results acknowledge the positive effect of topic familiarity on comprehension of reading materials.