Korean High School EFL Readers Processing of Temporal Information in English Narrative Texts

Abstract

There has been a consensus that readers create three different levels of representation such as surface, text-based, and situation model (Johnson-Laird, 1983

Just & Carpenter, 1987

Kintsch 1998

van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983). The surface and text-based representation refers to linguistic representation such as exact wording, sentences, and the semantic meaning representation conveyed by the text itself as a combination of sentences. The situation model has been regarded as the readers representation of the world the text to (Just & Carpenter, 1978). Zwaan, Langston, & Graesser (1995) proposed a general situation model, which is empirically testable. This is called the Event-Indexing Model. The model assumes that events in a story are organized in memory based on a series of five dimensions: 1) temporality (e.g., the order or duration of events)

2) spatiality (e.g., locations)

3) causality (e.g., how one event influences another event)

4) intentionality (e.g., goals)

5) protagonist (e.g., main character actions or emotions). A group of studies have examined the effects for each dimension of situation model regarding L1 reading comprehension process. Until now, however, only one study (Zwaan & Brown, 1996) provided empirical support for the construction of situation model in L2 reading comprehension. In fact, there has been no research in the Korean EFL contexts. Thus, the present study is the first attempt to broaden the theoretical approaching of Event-Indexing model into Korean high school EFL environment.

In line with prior research, this thesis is designed to investigate whether and how Korean High School EFL readers process and represent time (duration) in situation-model construction. This study poses following questions: 1) Will Korean EFL high school students detect inconsistency in duration-related information when they read narrative texts in English? 2) Is there any difference in EFL readers temporal information processing according to their levels of English proficiency? In the experiment, the researcher examined how duration-related inconsistencies (consistent, short inconsistent, long inconsistent) influenced processing time of Korean high school students for three proficiency groups (High, Intermediate, Low). The data were analyzed by one-way within (& between)-subject ANOVAs and paired t-tests. The main findings of the study are as follows: (1) Korean EFL readers in overall group were found to detect inconsistency in duration-related information when they read narrative texts in English. Korean high school students did spend more time reading the target sentences with short duration inconsistency than with long duration inconsistency. (2) Considering readers proficiency, there was processing speed difference among proficiency groups. In other words, groups with higher level of proficiency read faster than groups with lower level of proficiency across three temporal conditions. In terms of processing time according to temporal inconstancy, High Proficiency group demonstrated significant difference across temporal conditions while Intermediate and Low Proficiency groups did not. Only High Proficiency group spent more time reading the sentences with short duration inconsistency than with consistent or long duration inconsistency. Results indicate that native-like L2 processing of temporal information was achieved by highly proficient Korean EFL learners and it was not the case for lower level of participants. This provides the first evidence for the Korean EFL readers situation model construction during the English narrative comprehension. These results were discussed in terms of the Event-Indexing Model and implications for L2 pedagogy were considered.