An introspective study of Reading Interest influence on Reading Comprehension

A large number of researches in the domains of educational and cognitive psychology have confirmed that interest hasa powerful influence on learning. In particular, interest has been demonstrated to be related positively to readingcomprehension, recall, and text-based learning. The purpose of this study was to compare the comprehension byforeign language readers of higher and lower interest narrative texts written in more and less concrete language. Thisresearch also aimed at investigating the possible comprehension differences between male and female foreign languagereaders of narrative texts that were written to emphasize stereotypically male and female thematic characteristics. Inthe results of this study seven interest components, ease of comprehension, concreteness, unpredictability, personalrelevance, excitement, attention and engagement, and socialness were perceived. However, no significant differenceswere found between comprehension and free recall scores. The results also did not reveal any concrete connection toimproved comprehension and recall in the presence of higher interest, higher concreteness, or materials written to beespecially interesting to one gender over the other.

کلیدواژه ها:

reading comprehension ، interest components ، gender