EFL reading as seen through translation and discourse analysis: Narrative vs. expository texts

Reader question formation as a tool for measuring comprehension: narrative and expository textual inferences in a second language

“…The fact that there were a greater number of questions showing miscomprehension for the expository texts is similar to the finding in Bensoussan's (1990) study. According to Bensoussan, global comprehension difficulties are more likely to arise in narrative texts for L2 readers.…”

“…The fact that subjects formulated a significantly higher quantity of scripturally implicit questions for narrative texts (26%) than for expository texts (12%) is consistent with Bensoussan (1990) and Graesser et al's (1994) assertions that narrative passages are by nature much less explicit. Narrative passages usually show a less rigorous and more creative style of writing and purposefully omit facts and events that must be inferred by the reader.…”

“…In order to determine contradiction or confirmation between the current study and Bensoussan's (1990), we would need to know the exact nature of the miscomprehension displayed by the subjects' questions. If readers showed local miscomprehension, mostly because of linguistic factors, Bensoussan's findings would be supported.…”

“…Few studies investigate L1 and L2 differences of narrative and expository textual comprehension. Bensoussan (1990) posits that important differences exist between narrative and expository texts and that each text type poses its own particular problems specific to L2 readers.…”

“…In expository texts, comprehension difficulties arise from the reader's inability to make sense of some linguistic features such as specific grammatical structures as well as expressions and vocabulary items (Bensoussan, 1990;Kroll, 1993;Tarone, 1977). As a result, the local coherence of certain passages, more than the general comprehension of the text itself, may be affected.…”