Novitas-ROYAL,
2008, Vol.: 2 (1), 88-91.[i]
THE ROLE OF GIVEN INFORMATION ON THE SPEED OF THE
COMPREHENSION OF CONTEXT AND NON-CONTEXT BASED INFORMATION IN EFL LEARNERS
Abstract
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 information 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.
Key words: Given information, new information, context, reading
comprehension, Persian learners of English
Özet
Kavramanın ikinci dil öğrenimi ve
edinimi 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 olarak) öğrencisi seçilmiştir. Her biri 20 tane
cümle içeren (10 öncül ve 10 dolaylı öncül) iki liste
kullanılmıştır. Öğrenciler kırkar kişilik
rastgele seçilmiş iki gruba ayrılmıştır. Her bir gruba
birer liste gösterilmiştir, ve cümleleri gösterirlen bir bilgisayar
program kullanılmıştır. Her birinin etkisini sorgulayabilmek
için, bilgisayar vasıtası ile cümle ikililerinin kavranma zamanı
ölçülmüştür. Veri çözümlemesi göstermektedir ki verilmiş bilginin
varlığı, yeni bilginin daha hızlı kavranmasında
güçlü bir etkiye sahiptir.
Anahtar Sözcükler: Verilmiş bilgi, yeni bilgi, bağlam,
okuduğunu kavrama, ana dili Farsça olan İngilizce öğrencileri
1. INTRODUCTION
In the
literature, new and given commonly are referred to as: newold,
rhymetheme, focuspresupposition, commenttopic and context
independentcontext dependent all of them refer to new and given,
respectively. The concepts of old and new information explain such phenomena in
language like word order, the use of anaphoric devices, intonation and stress.
Halliday (1985) first indicated the ideas of newgiven in a linguistic journal.
In his primary definition, given information was a concept that was either
previously mentioned, i.e. contextually given, or physically present at the
time of the discourse. New information is logically everything else. In the
given-new strategy, given information refers to information the listener/reader
has already available in memory, conceivably facts that have just been mentioned.
If the necessary facts have not been stated or have been stated too long ago,
then integration by the given-new strategy must become more difficult. To
demonstrate this, Carpenter and Just (1980), Halliday and Hasan (1985),
Kintsch, (1998), Welts (2002), Ouafeu (2007), JIA Li-ping (2007) and many other researchers conducted different
studies in different places with a variety of subjects. The purpose of the present study is to
experimentally investigate the role of given information, mentioned in the context,
in the comprehension of new information by Persian EFL learners.
2. METHODOLOGY
2.1. Subjects
80
subjects were selected from among 200 female and male students of English as a
foreign language, whose scores on the MELAB test were between 1 and 2 standard
deviations above the mean. They were selected in such a way that they did not differ in
terms of general language ability. The number of the students was sufficient to
permit statistical analysis.
2.2. Materials
40 context-target pairs sentences, 20 direct antecedent pairs
and 20 indirect antecedent pairs, were improved. Each direct antecedent pair
was matched with an indirect antecedent pair containing the same target
sentence and a slightly changed context sentence. These context-target pairs were
made up to be as natural as possible, and they covered a large number of
different topics. The 40 pairs were then divided up into two lists of 20 pairs.
Each list included both Direct and Indirect Antecedent pairs, with the
constraint that if a Direct Antecedent pair occurred on one list, its matched
Indirect Antecedent pair occurred on the other. The Split-half method was used
for dividing the sentences into two equal halves. Half of the subjects were
presented with one list, and the rest with the second list. It was therefore
possible to compare the comprehension time of the same sentence in both a
Direct Antecedent and Indirect Antecedent context.
2.3.
Procedure
To present the sentences, a computer-based program was used
and the context and target sentences were presented sequentially. First, the
subjects were asked to click the start button to see the context
sentence, and then they were asked to click the next button when they
felt that they had fully comprehended it. On clicking the button, the context
sentence disappeared and the target sentence appeared and the timer of the
computer started to measure the taken time for comprehending this sentence (the
target sentence). In this stage, the subjects were asked to click the next button
immediately when they felt they had fully comprehended the sentence, and so the
timer stopped measuring. On clicking this button, the target sentence
disappeared and three true/false sentences on each pair appeared. The subjects
were asked to answer them, considering the context and the target sentences and
on the basis of their comprehension. In addition, the subjects were asked to
produce orally what they understood from the sentences and at the end of each
project, they were interviewed.
A pilot study was carried out to identify the possible
problems in conducting the experiment and necessary modifications. The examples
are given below in order to give some idea of how the materials actually looked
like:
Each Direct Antecedent pairs, such as:
·
We got some beer out of the trunk. The beer was warm.
·
The beer was in the trunk.
·
The beer in the trunk was cold enough.
·
Some beer was taken out of the trunk.
Each Indirect Antecedent pairs, such as:
·
We checked the picnic supplies. The beer was warm.
·
The beer was in the picnic supplies.
·
The beer in the picnic supplies was warm.
·
The picnic supplies contained some cool beer.
A statistical analysis (t-test) was conducted to compare
means obtained from Direct and Indirect Antecedent pair sentences.
3. RESULTS
Means
and standard errors of M (T/S) for both Direct Antecedent pair sentences and
Indirect Antecedent pair sentences were calculated as presented in Table 1.
Table.1. Means and
standard errors of Direct and Indirect Antecedent pair
sentences
|
Presentation |
Number of observation |
Mean |
Standard error |
|
D.A.P1 |
80 |
6.93 |
0.15 |
|
I.A.P2 |
80 |
9.55 |
0.27 |
1 Direct Antecedent pairs
2 Indirect Antecedent pairs
Statistical
analysis (t-test) indicated that the mean of Indirect Antecedent pairs was
significantly higher (P < 0.01) than that of Direct Antecedent pairs. It
means that the null hypothesis was rejected and according to the result, the
target sentences showed a tendency to be comprehended better and faster by
participants when the related information is present in the context sentences
but for Indirect Antecedent pairs such a tendency was not evident. This outcome
confirmed the result obtained from the subjects oral production.
4. DISCUSSION
As Dooling and Christiaansen (1977)
have concluded, there exist several different levels of comprehension. At a
shallow level, people may judge how comprehensible a sentence is without really
comprehending it fully. At a deeper level they may comprehend a sentence
without relating it to context and at a deeper level they comprehend sentences
with considering the context. Clearly, the interest here was in the deepest
level. In this study the assumption is that most subjects were indeed using
this criterion for their judgments on all sentences. If they had used either of
the first two criteria, there should have been no significant differences
between conditions. Therefore the differences found must be assigned to the
subject comprehending the sentences at the deepest level.
In our study, we assume that subjects
will consider the first sentence of such a pair as completely new and set up a
separate structure in memory. But for processing the second, they will try to
comprehend it with considering the information contained in the first.
Therefore they will take the old information of the second and try to find a
matching antecedent in the information mentioned in the first. If the
antecedent is available directly, then the subjects will comprehend the second
(target) sentence quickly; if not, they need more time, since they must
construct a bridging structure. Consistent with the predictions, this
experiment showed that comprehension of a sentence containing a definite noun
phrase took less time when the context sentence had explicitly posited the
existence of the definite noun phrase than when it had not. So the findings in
this study suggested that the answer to the research question is yes. The
presence of given information mentioned in the context sentence has an
important role in the speed of the comprehension of new information.
These findings are in agreement with
what Clark and Haviland (1977) with respect to the effect of given information
in the comprehension of new information in the English native speakers. Also an
approach compatible with our result is what
Given-New Strategy and its possible operation in
This
research like any other research is not complete in itself. Further
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