An Empirical Method of Assessing Topic Familiarity in Reading Comprehension Research

Spyridakis, Jan H.; Wenger, Michael J.

doi:10.1080/0141192910170405

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Rather than pretesting for interest and familiarity, we administered the Topic Assessment Questionnaire at the end of the experiment, as suggested by Spyridakis and Wenger (1991). In this way, we eliminated the chance that the questionnaire would prime content knowledge or a textual schema and thus enhance comprehension or recall.…”

Section: Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Representations of Rhetorical Conventions: The Effects on Reading Recall

2002

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This study explores whether culture‐specific rhetorical conventions affect the reading recall of Chinese EFL college students at two grade levels. Four English passages verified as using Chinese rhetorical conventions were modified into four counterpart versions reflecting English rhetorical conventions. One hundred twenty Taiwanese freshmen and 120 seniors read two of the four passages, one in each rhetorical convention. After each reading, students completed a passage perception questionnaire and an immediate‐recall test. One week later, participants completed a delayed‐recall test and a topic assessment questionnaire. Although students failed to perceive rhetorical differences, different rhetorical convention had a significant overall effect on Chinese students' reading comprehension in both immediate and delayed recall. Moreover, post hoc comparisons revealed that two topics among the four reflected in the eight passages showed more impact from rhetorical convention than did the others. Analysis of questionnaire data suggested that factors such as topic interest and topic familiarity moderated the effect of rhetorical convention. The study concludes with suggestions for future research and classroom implications.

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Section: Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Representations of Rhetorical Conventions: The Effects on Reading Recall

2002

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“…The participants read the post (and viewed video content if assigned the video treatment) and then took a postreading test survey immediately afterward to test their recall of the information. The postreading test used an entirely different question set to the prereading test to avoid priming effects, where participants use pretest questions to direct their reading of the text because they are conscious of being tested (Spyridakis & Wenger, 1991).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Are You Writing for? Differences in Response to Blog Design Between Scientists and Nonscientists

Gardiner

Sullivan

Grand

2018

Science Communication

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Science blogs have been advocated as potential mediators between science and nonscientist readers; however, they are mostly read by other scientists, with little research on how blogs can be made more appealing for nonscientists. We compared four possible treatments of a science blog post (text-only, humor, images and video). Nonscientists recalled more information when images were included compared to humor, while scientists performed worse with text-only than with video. Nonscientists enjoyed the images treatment most, while scientists preferred the video treatment. Adding images to blog posts is recommended as an easy method of increasing recall and enjoyment among readers.

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“…Although the attributes of the text may greatly influence the comprehension of the readers, the greatest influence may be due to the traits of the reader, which are as follows: (a) Reading skills that include decoding words using knowledge of grammar (Perfetti, 1985) and deductive skills for inferring information may not be present in the text (Callery, 2005;Pang, 2008). (b) Professional experience helps encode text information (Langer, 1984;Spyridakis & Wenger, 1991). Thus, readers with professional experience may understand better than those with less experience (Stahl et al, 1989).…”

Section: Text Attributesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Annual Reports Readability From Linguistic and Communication Perspectives: Systematic Literature Review

Ponce

González

Al-Mohareb

2023

Business and Professional Communication Quarterly

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This research presents a new theoretical framework through assessing readability research based on the linguistics and communication perspectives to determine the obfuscation probabilities and how to mitigate them. Therefore, this systematic literature review analyzed 219 papers using the SCOPUS and Web of Science databases. Findings show that in every language approach, there is an obfuscation level for annual reports, depending on the weakness of a particular component of the text communication process, starting from the use of a complex writing style and ending with the imposition of specific methods of presentation, while suggesting ways to mitigate the obfuscation.

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An Empirical Method of Assessing Topic Familiarity in Reading Comprehension Research

Cited by 9 publications

References 24 publications

Cultural Representations of Rhetorical Conventions: The Effects on Reading Recall

Cultural Representations of Rhetorical Conventions: The Effects on Reading Recall

Who Are You Writing for? Differences in Response to Blog Design Between Scientists and Nonscientists

Annual Reports Readability From Linguistic and Communication Perspectives: Systematic Literature Review

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