Effect of inserted adjunct questions on L2 reading with Chinese learners

Abstract

The present study examines the effect of adjunct questions on the reading comprehension of English‐speaking learners of Chinese as a second language (L2). In Experiment 1, fourth‐year (advanced) learners (n = 42) read two texts, either with or without adjunct questions, and completed a multiple‐choice cloze. In Experiments 2 and 3, second‐year (intermediate) learners (n = 40 and 34, respectively) read two texts, either with or without adjunct questions, and completed multiple‐choice cloze (Experiment 2) and written recall (Experiment 3). The results showed that the positive effect of adjunct questions only emerged among intermediate learners for written recall. These findings suggested that L2 level and comprehension assessment tasks modulate the effect of adjunct questions. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research are provided.

Effects of Adjunct Questions on L2 Reading Comprehension with Texts of Different Types

“…The results showed that the readers' L2 proficiency and prior subject knowledge did not enhance the effects of embedded adjunct questions on reading comprehension [9]. A more recent study with intermediate and advanced learners of Chinese found that the adjunct questions only had positive effects on readers of intermediate levels with written recall as a comprehension assessment, but not on advanced L2 learners [10].…”

“…Some have tried the analogy method to assist adult L2 comprehension with domain-specific text types [18,19]. When analogies failed to achieve the expected positive effect on L2 reading comprehension, other researchers began to hypothesize the influence of adjunct questions on the L2 reading comprehension because this method has been proven to be beneficial in L1 reading [3][4][5][6][7][8]10,14]. The limited number of studies conducted so far examined and analyzed variables such as learners' L2 language proficiency level, the embedded question types, methods used to deal with the inserted adjuncts, and the types of assessment tasks for reading comprehension and text types.…”

“…It is acknowledged that low-ability readers may have problems distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information [14]. However, research on readers' language proficiency has revealed that using embedded adjunct questions to enhance readers' comprehension of both L1 and L2 proved to be more beneficial to low-ability readers than to high-level readers [3,6,9,10,14]. With 97 advanced learners of Spanish, Brantmeier et al examined the effects of embedded adjunct questions, prior subject knowledge, and L2 Spanish proficiency on the L2 reading comprehension of scientific passages.…”

“…So far, however, there are limited studies on the effects of adjunct questions on L2 readers [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Though most researchers have demonstrated a limited benefit of adjunct questions on L2 reading comprehension, a closer examination of relevant literature has revealed that the effects of adjunct questions on reading comprehension were not significant [4] and often varied with different comprehension measurements [10].…”

“…So far, however, there are limited studies on the effects of adjunct questions on L2 readers [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Though most researchers have demonstrated a limited benefit of adjunct questions on L2 reading comprehension, a closer examination of relevant literature has revealed that the effects of adjunct questions on reading comprehension were not significant [4] and often varied with different comprehension measurements [10]. Additionally, previous researchers have analyzed the effects of adjunct questions on L2 reading comprehension with either expository texts [3][4][5]10] or scientific texts [9].…”