Effect of cultural familiarity on reading comprehension performance: a case ­ Study of Vietnamese and chilean efl learners

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EFFECT OF CULTURAL FAMILIARITY ON READING
COMPREHENSION PERFORMANCE: A CASE­STUDY
OF VIETNAMESE AND CHILEAN EFL LEARNERS
Nguyen Ngoc Bao Chau1*, Sean Liu, Katia Lopez
University of Foreign Languages, Hue University, Vietnam1
Greenwich English College, Melbourne, Australia, University of Santiago, Chile
Received: 30/08/2018; Revised: 20/09/2018; Accepted: 22/04/2019
Abstract: This paper investigates the influence of cultural background knowledge on EFL
reading comprehension. To explore the general assumption that cultural background
knowledge helps students to better comprehend a text, a reading comprehension test
including two passages describing a Vietnamese and a Chilean national holiday was
developed. Forty one Vietnamese and 35 Chilean students took the test. A brief
questionnaire was also used to examine students’ perceptions of their familiarity with the
texts based on their background knowledge. Results from the t-tests revealed statistically
significant differences between the two groups. Both Vietnamese and Chilean students
respectively outperformed the other group in the test section about their national holiday,
which suggested a positive influence of cultural background knowledge. Weak but
significant correlations were found between students’ reported familiarity with the texts and
their scores in each section. The findings of this study provide some relevant implications
for language testing and second language instruction. 
Key words: Cultural familiarity, language testing, reading comprehension
1. Introduction
The ability to understand, extract and utilise information through reading a text is
included in many test constructs to ascertain the linguistic proficiency of people who use
English as a second language. Reading components are included both for English tests for
academic purposes, such as the PTE and the TOEFL, as well as tests for more general purposes,
such as the IELTS (General Training) and the Cambridge PET. A test taker has to utilise many
different skills in order to read a text, depending on what he or she is asked to do with the
information presented within the text (Hughes, 2002). Different skills and cognitive processes
are activated when different types of texts are read. 
There are many factors that contribute to an individual’s performance on a reading test such
as language proficiency, reading strategies and background knowledge (Alderson, 2000). It is
generally understood that prior or background knowledge has some degree of influence on an
individual’s ability to comprehend and extrapolate from a text; more knowledge of the topic of the
text will lead to better comprehension and learning (Braasch & Goldman, 2010). Background
knowledge can be reflected through topic familiarity (e.g. a scientist reading a text about biology)
or cultural familiarity (e.g. an Australian reading about cricket). A good lexical resource, which
helps in reading comprehension, is also in some sense an indication of an individual’s topical
background knowledge, especially when considering domain-specific vocabulary. 
* Email: chaunguyen258@gmail.com
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Given the mixed findings in the literature pertaining to the influence of cultural
familiarity on reading comprehension test scores, the current study is motivated to further
investigate this interaction. Specifically, the study examines the effect of cultural familiarity on
reading performance of Vietnamese and Chilean students at A2 to B1 level (Common European
Framework of Reference). The following research questions inform this study:
1. Is there a significant difference between students from different backgrounds in their test
scores on respectively more culturally familiar texts?
2. What is the relationship between students’ perception of their cultural familiarity and their
reading test scores?
2. Theoretical framework
2.1. Cognitive processes in reading
Before critically reviewing literature pertaining to the role of cultural background
knowledge on the comprehension of texts and resultant scores on reading tests, it is fruitful to
briefly examine literature on the cognitive processes involved in reading. Van Den Broek,
Young, Tzeng and Linderholm (1999) more than a decade ago conceptualised the Landscape
Model of Reading where they identified four sources of activation that may happen when a
person reads a particular text. Later, research done by Van Den Broek, Virtue, Everson, Tzeng
and Sung (2002) on comprehension of science texts note that a “coherent mental representation
of a text consists of a network of semantic relations between text elements and the reader’s
background knowledge” (p. 133). Around the same time, Nassaji (2002) concluded that models
of L2 reading comprehension are interactive because they involve processes that are both data-
driven which is analysis of the text per se, and reader-driven that can be understood as an
individual using background knowledge and linguistic proficiency to help comprehend the text. 
In terms of reader-driven processes, schema theory in reading divides schemata into two
categories: formal schema, related to knowledge of language, and content schema, related to
domain-specific knowledge (Bernhardt, 1991). Ketchum (2006) later defined cultural schema as
a culture specific branch of content schema and articulated the fact that it is an instrumental
process that a reader needs to use to fully understand a text. Cultural background knowledge
plays a role in reading comprehension, but it is unclear whether or not it influences
comprehension to an extent where it would actually affect test scores. 
2.2. Effect of cultural background knowledge
Cultural background knowledge does not only become manifest in the form of tangible
content knowledge in an individual’s endeavour to comprehend a text in his or her second
language; sometimes culturally salient reading strategies, for example a preference for top down
or bottom up reader-driven processes, also influence text comprehension and scores. Certain
item types that are included in reading tests, for example those that require bottom-up
processing, would favour certain cultural groups because they had been taught to read in this
way (Nassaji, 2002). Abbott (2006) found that Chinese teachers tend to use approaches that
result in Chinese students mostly paying attention first to form and later to meaning while the
opposite is true for students in the Arab nations. Differential item functioning was used to
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determine the probability of scoring the correct answer for the same item for different groups of
people and it was found that even though there were minimal score differences between the two
groups of examinees on bottom-up (form first) and top-down (meaning first) bundles of items,
different strategies were in fact used by the different groups (Abbott, 2006). This shows that
cultural background knowledge about reading strategies is a significant consideration in
assessing reading because certain cultural groups may approach test items differently; a test
with more bottom-up items, for example, may in fact favour some cultural groups. 
Research has also been done on nativising texts so that even though the content remains
the same, the actual elements become more familiar to test takers. Alptekin (2006) and later
Erten and Razi (2009) both designed an experiment where they nativised an original text by
changing many elements to culturally familiar ones for Turkish test takers. Both studies found
that the groups that received the nativised version scored better than those who did not in terms
of comprehension of texts. While Alptekin’s study made use of multiple choice questions to
assess comprehension of the text, Erten and Razi (2009) used free recall tasks to ascertain if
students remembered and comprehended content. Here it becomes evident that there is a
significant difference in comprehension and performance on comprehension-related reading
tests even if only basic elements are adapted to make the texts more culturally familiar. 
Studies have also been done where completely different texts that dealt with culturally
different topics were given to different groups of test takers. Lee (2007) conducted a research on
topic familiarity on Korean EFL students’ reading comprehension and learning of passive forms
and found that groups that were given texts on more culturally familiar topics scored better
when asked to recall content, but did not score better when asked to complete a form correction
task on the passive voice. Dehghan and Sadighi (2011) designed a study where Iranian students
were asked to read two texts that contained culturally familiar themes and two texts that did not.
Assessment consisted of a mixture of questions that required local (bottom-up) and global (top-
down) processing. The results showed that readers outperformed themselves on familiar texts as
compared to unfamiliar texts and it was concluded that cultural familiarity (that is not always
related to linguistic competence) does have a significant influence on reading comprehension.
Li and Lai (2012) wanted to test if culturally more familiar texts resulted in a shorter reading
time and a better score on a cloze test and designed an experiment where the independent
variable was two texts, one that was more culturally familiar and another that was more
culturally unfamiliar, and where the dependent variables were time spent in reading the text and
performance on the cloze test. They found that culturally more familiar texts do in fact result in
a higher degree of comprehension of the texts and also take a shorter time to read. These three
studies all indicate that culturally more familiar texts facilitate comprehension and result in
better scores on reading comprehension tests.
However, a study done by Stott (2004) did not support this hypothesis. In this study, two
groups of Japanese students were given the same slightly simplified English translation of a
Japanese novel, but one group was told the origin and source of the text while the other group
was left in the dark. Results showed that the group who knew the text origin did not outperform
the other group. The design of this experiment differs from those previously mentioned in that
the two groups were given the same text and that there was no obvious difference between the
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two groups in terms of cultural knowledge. However, the results here do not support the
argument that cultural knowledge is activated in a reading of a text in a second language to a
large degree. 
In fact, some studies have found that language proficiency is a stronger predictor of
academic reading performance than background knowledge (Hill & Liu, 2012). Chan (2003)
had Hong Kong (HK) and mainland Chinese students of differing proficiency levels complete a
cloze test on both a culturally neutral text and a text that would be more culturally familiar to
the HK students. Results showed that for the lower proficiency groups, HK students scored
significantly higher than mainland Chinese students on the more culturally familiar text, but
there was no significant difference between the higher proficiency students for performance on
either text (Chan, 2003). Hill and Liu (2012), selected three passages on cultural topics and two
on physical science for a study that utilised differential item functioning to ascertain the
relationship between background knowledge and language proficiency in TOEFL iBT tests.
Results showed some level of interaction between background knowledge and proficiency level
at the item level, but there was no passage-level differential functioning. Furthermore, the study
found evidence that background knowledge does not always work to an individual’s advantage,
especially when individuals rely too heavily on their background knowledge in completing the
test when answering items that require local (bottom-up) processing. This study showed that
participants used background knowledge to answer the questions, but did not indicate that it has
in fact helped them comprehend the intended meaning of the writing. 
3. Methods 
3.1. Participants
Two groups of learners of English as an additional language from Vietnamese and
Chilean backgrounds participated in this study. The Chilean participants were originally 50
native speakers of Spanish with ages ranging between 17 and 18 years old. The teacher reported
the students to be at an English proficiency level of A2 to B1, according to the CEFR. They
belonged to two different year-12 classes in the same public school located in Viña del Mar, one
of the main cities in Chile. The original Vietnamese students participating in the study were 119
first year university students majoring in English at a Vietnamese public university. Their ages
ranged from 18 to 19. Their proficiency levels were also reported by their teacher to be at an A2
to B1 level. The students belonged to 4 different classes of the same subject Reading 1. 65
students from two classes participated in the pilot of the test instrument, and 54 students from
the other two classes participated in our final test version. 
Due to the limited time and resources of this study, we were not able to test students’
proficiency prior to data collection and had to rely on teachers’ reports. We realised the use of
reported proficiency levels from teachers can be problematic as it was subjective and there could
be inconsistency between the Chilean and Vietnamese teachers’ interpretation of the CEFR levels.
Therefore, we added an extra complementary reading section to our test (See Instruments section)
and used the total test scores to omit outliers (i.e. those whose test scores are too high or too low).
In our final selection of participants for analysis, we chose 41 Vietnamese (M=3.68, SD=1.19) and
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35 Chilean students (M=3.71, SD=1.22). We believe the selection has resulted in a more
homogenous group of participants in regards to proficiency level. 
Table 1. Summary of participants’ background for each stage
N Gender Nationality Proficiency Age
Piloting stage 65 6M, 59F Vietnamese A2 - B1 18 - 19
Data collection 54 8M, 46F Vietnamese A2 - B1 18 - 19
50 23M, 27F Chilean A2 - B1 17 – 18
Data analysis 41 5M, 36F Vietnamese upper-A2 18 – 19
35 15M, 20F Chilean upper-A2 17 – 18
3.2. Instruments
3.2.1. Designed test 
The target domain for our designed test was the reading that needs to be done by an
individual in everyday situations when living in a country where English is the dominant, if not
only, language. For this, the universe of generalisation was the ability to comprehend
information presented within an informational text about cultural events.
In order to answer our first research question, we designed a test that deliberately
included two texts that were about culturally familiar topics to Vietnamese and Chilean
participants. Text A was about Tet Nguyen Dan (Vietnamese New Year) and Text B was about
Fiestas Patrias (Chilean Independence Day); these events are considered to be significant in the
respective countries and so we were able to assume that the participants in both Vietnam and
Chile would have some cultural familiarity with one of the texts. The texts were drawn from the
same source (Henderson, 2005) and edited to retain some proper nouns in the original language
such as Tet Nguyen Dan and banh chung for text A and Fiesta Patrias and cueca for text B, as
well as facilitate the creation of multiple choice items. Care was also taken to ensure that both
texts were of similar length, approximately 270 words each. The texts had to be long enough for
5 multiple-choice items each, but short enough so that participants could complete the test and
survey in the allotted class time. 
We chose multiple choice questions due to the fact that they would provide us with more
discrete data from which to work. This item type is also prevalent in reading tests taken by
students at the same proficiency level as our participants, such as the Cambridge PET. Care was
taken to ensure that each text included both items that required global and local reading
processes. Each text has five of the same item types to ensure the similarity between the two
sets of questions. Table 2 shows a summary of the item descriptors.
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Table 2. Item descriptors
Item type Specific task description Example
Local reading processes:
Vocabulary 
item 
Infer meaning of an 
unknown word from 
context
Which word is closest in meaning to “evil” in the
following sentence in paragraph 2?
Pronominal 
reference
Assign previously 
mentioned subjects or 
objects to pronouns.
What does the word ‘it’ in the following sentence 
in paragraph 3 refer to?
Organisation 
of 
information
Insert a sentence into the 
correct place within a 
paragraph, maintaining the
coherence. 
Where does this sentence fit best?
Global reading processes:
Identifying 
implicitly 
stated main 
ideas
Infer implicitly stated main
ideas in a paragraph. 
What can be inferred from the first paragraph?
Identifying 
explicitly 
stated main 
ideas
Identify explicitly stated 
supporting ideas in a 
paragraph.
1. Why do the Vietnamese people release a 
special type of fish into the river?
Because our test was relatively short with only ten items, we included an additional
section with five questions to obtain a more trustworthy measure of students’ proficiency. For
this section, we used a sample PET reading section with a culturally neutral text and similar test
item format. The scores from this section aid us in limiting our participants to a more
homogenous range to minimise the proficiency variable. 
We piloted our test version A with a panel of three Chilean and four Vietnamese language
professionals, and adjusted items for difficulty to develop version B. Version B was piloted with
a sample from the participant population (65 students in Vietnam). From this piloting we carried
out item analysis and distractor analysis. The analyses revealed several problematic test items.
The level of difficulty was too low for items 1, 4 and 8, and too high for items 6 and 7. In
addition, items 3, 4, 6 and 7 did not provide much discrimination between students. Distractor
analysis helped us identified problematic distractors to modify. For example, items 1, 4 and 8
had a disproportionate distribution of distractor selection. We edited these items by modifying
difficulty level of questions and changed problematic distractors. In developing Version C, we
were aware that our pilot test was only completed by Vietnamese participants and therefore tried
to allow for any inconsistencies that might have arisen as a result of cultural familiarity with
Text A or the lack thereof for Text B. The edited test was our test instrument that was sent out to
participants. After sending out version C to all our participants, we analysed the data received
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for reliability and found that Cronbach’s alpha was low (α= 0.4). We also conducted test item
analysis; see Table 3 for the IF and R values for each of the items.
Table 3. Item analysis for Test version C
Item 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
IF 0.83 0.31 0.34 0.24 0.33 0.1 0.53 0.61 0.22 0.57
r pbi 0.43 0.4 0