Европейский журнал экспериментальной биологии Открытый доступ

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Investigating the effect of local and global cohesion on improving reading comprehension of students with low and high prior knowledge

Abolghasem Shakiba, Ali Akbar Saif, Hassan Asadzadeh and Soghra Ebrahimi Ghavam

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effect of local and global cohesion on improving reading comprehension of students with low and high prior knowledge. The subjects of high prior knowledge consisted of 80 third-year high school students (61 females, 19 males), and the subjects of low prior knowledge consisted of 80 third-year high school students (70 females.10 males), who were randomly selected using multistage sampling method. Participants of high and low prior knowledge were randomly assigned into four groups consisting of low local and high global cohesion, high local and low global cohesion, and low local and global cohesion, high local and global cohesion. The research instruments were: 1) experimental text, 2) comprehension test, and 3) prior knowledge test. The subjects must read the text and after that answered the questions of reading comprehension test. The collected data were statistically analyzed. Results showed that there is interaction among local and global text cohesion with reader’s prior knowledge. High local and global cohesion text significantly improved comprehension, compared to the low local and global cohesion text. It was also found that readers who knew little about the domain of the text benefit from a coherent text, whereas high-knowledge readers benefit from a minimally coherent text.