The Effects of Cultural Familiarity on Reading Comprehension and on Perception of Thai Undergraduate Students on Literary texts

Abstract

This study reported on a quasi-experimental study assessing the impact of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension. In addition, this study also aimed to explore Thai English-major students' perception on reading English short stories. Participants of this study were thirty-five English-major students taking English literature courses at Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University. The instruments were (1) two short stories with comparable theme, linguistic complexity and length but in different cultural contexts - one in American and the other in Thai context, (2) a reading comprehension test from the two texts and (3) a questionnaire on the participants' perception on reading the two texts. The findings showed that the culturally familiar text resulted in significantly better literal, inferential and overall comprehension. The findings also demonstrated that the participants had significantly better perception on reading the Thai short story in terms of authenticity, ease of understanding, enjoyment, imagery, personal involvement, relevance (p < 0.1), and they also reported significantly more emotional reaction (p < 0.5). However, there was no significant difference in aspects like identification with characters, interest, motivation, preference and value. Implications for selecting reading materials for English literature class are discussed.