The effect of cultural background of a text on reading comprehension of stories by ESL students in Puerto Ric

This study looks at the use of Latino Literature in the ESL classroom at the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez Campus. It explores whether or not these students demonstrate better reading comprehension with texts that contain situations that are culturally familiar to them. This study also determined the preference for stories by these students. Two sections of INGL 3201 were used in this study. Subjects answered a pre-reading questionnaire, read two stories, one by a Latino and one by a North American author and answered reading comprehension questions as well as a preference questionnaire. An oral interview was conducted with randomly selected students. As opposed to previous studies, the results of this study determined that the cultural background of a text did not have an influence on reading comprehension because background information was not taught; consequently subjects failed to activate the appropriate schemata.