Learning from the L2 Expository Text

This study Questioned what happens in L2 reading comprehension of the expository text, as measured by recall and inference-making abilities, when a L2 reader was induced to develop a content schema about the topic of a target text, but the structure of that schema departs from the structure of the target text Seventy-four. Korean university students read either the same version text twice (consistent condition) or two different version texts (inconsistent condition) with a three-day interval between the two readings. The results of a verification test indicate that, for those subjects with higher L2 reading proficiency, the inconsistent condition was more beneficial than the consistent condition for the inference-making task. On the other hand, for lower-level L2 readers, the consistent condition was more favorable for the recall task. It was concluded that inducing a structurally inconsistent schema through an L2 pre-reading would be beneficial only when the reader's L2 linguistic ability is proficient enough to produce necessary propositions from the pre-reading.