Abstract
Readers’ emotions often become engaged while reading and can sometimes enhance and sometimes skew text comprehension, with most research focused on reading texts in one’s native language. This project extended the work of Gaskins to explore how adolescents’ culturally constructed emotions affected their reading comprehension, and how this effect varied when reading in their first (Korean) or second (English) language. Students (N = 477) in a Korean high school read short paragraphs on four expository topics counterbalanced to represent both languages and both an emotional and neutral version of each topic. Results were that participants were more emotionally engaged and performed better on comprehension assessments when reading emotional than neutral texts. Thus, unlike Gaskin’s study, these results indicated that emotions were generally helpful for comprehension, whether the text was in the reader’s first language or a learned language, possibly by way of increasing attention and engagement with the text.
|
Abu-Rabia, S. (1998). Social and cognitive factors influencing the reading comprehension of Arab students learning Hebrew as a second language in Israel. Journal of Research in Reading, 21, 201–212. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Ai, H., Lu, X. (2010, 6). A web-based system for automatic measurement of lexical complexity. Paper presented at the 27th Annual Symposium of the Computer-Assisted Language Consortium (CALICO-10), Amherst, MA. Google Scholar | |
|
Ainley, M., Corrigan, M., Richardson, N. (2005). Students, tasks and emotions: Identifying the contribution of emotions to students’ reading of popular culture and popular science texts. Learning and Instruction, 15, 433–447. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Baldwin, R. S., Peleg-Bruckner, Z., McClintock, A. H. (1985). Effects of topic interest and prior knowledge on reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 20, 497–504. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Benesch, S. (2012). Considering emotions in critical English language teaching: Theories and praxis. New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Bernhardt, E. B. (1991). Reading development in a second language: Theoretical, empirical, and classroom perspectives (Vol. 1). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Google Scholar | |
|
Bernhardt, E. B. (2011). Understanding advanced second-language reading. New York, NY: Routledge. Google Scholar | |
|
Brantmeier, C. (2005). Anxiety about L2 reading or L2 reading tasks? A study with advanced language learners. The Reading Matrix, 5, 67–85. Google Scholar | |
|
Carrell, P. L. (1983). Three components of background knowledge in reading comprehension. Language Learning, 33, 183–203. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Choi, I. C. (2008). The impact of EFL testing on EFL education in Korea. Language Testing, 25, 39–62. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Dewaele, J. M. (2010). Emotions in multiple languages. London, England: Palgrave McMillan. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Dijkstra, K., Zwaan, R. A., Graesser, A. C., Magliano, J. P. (1994). Character and reader emotions in literary texts. Poetics, 23, 139–157. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Do, S. L., Schallert, D. L. (2004). Emotions and classroom talk: Toward a model of the role of affect in students’ experiences of classroom discussions. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 619–634. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Dutro, E. (2008). “That’s why I was crying on this book”: Trauma as testimony in responses to literature. Changing English, 15, 423–434. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Elder, C., Golombek, P., Stott, N. (2004). Familiarity breeds contempt: Reading texts from learners’ own cultures does not guarantee recall. TESOL Quarterly, 38, 345–352. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Fortner, B. H., Henk, W. A. (1990). Effects of issue-related attitude on readers’ comprehension and judgments of unbiased text. Reading Research and Instruction, 30(2), 1–16. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Gaskins, R. W. (1996). “That’s just how it was”: The effect of issue-related emotional involvement on reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 31, 386–405. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Gee, J. P. (2000). Discourse and sociocultural studies in reading. In Pearson, P. D., Barr, R., Kamil, M. L. (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 3, pp. 195–207). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Google Scholar | |
|
Gee, J. P. (2001). Reading as situated language: A sociocognitive perspective. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 44, 714–725. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Goetz, E. T., Sadoski, M., Stowe, M. L., Fetsco, T. G., Kemp, S. G. (1993). Imagery and emotional response in reading literary text: Quantitative and qualitative analyses. Poetics, 22, 35–49. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Grabe, W. (2009). Reading in a second language: Moving from theory to practice. Cambridge, England: Ernst Klett Sprachen. Google Scholar | |
|
Henk, W. A., Holmes, B. C. (1988). Effects of content-related attitude on the comprehension and retention of expository text. Reading Psychology: An International Quarterly, 9, 203–225. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Jimenez, R. T., García, G. E., Pearson, P. D. (1996). The reading strategies of bilingual latina/o students who are successful English readers: Opportunities and obstacles. Reading Research Quarterly, 31, 90–112. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
King, R. B. (2010). What do students feel in school and how do we measure them?: Examining the psychometric properties of the S-AEQ-F. Philippine Journal of Psychology, 43, 161–176. Google Scholar | |
|
Kintsch, W. (1988). The role of knowledge in discourse comprehension: A construction-integration model. Psychological Review, 95, 163–182. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Kintsch, W. (2004). The construction-integration model of text comprehension and its implications for instruction. Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, 5, 1270–1328. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Kneepkens, E. W., Zwaan, R. A. (1994). Emotions and literary text comprehension. Poetics, 23, 125–138. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Komeda, H., Kusumi, T. (2006). The effect of a protagonist’s emotional shift on situation model construction. Memory & Cognition, 34, 1548–1556. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Lee, J. F. (1986). Background knowledge and L2 reading. The Modern Language Journal, 70, 350–354. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Lee, J. W., Schallert, D. L. (1997). The relative contribution of L2 language proficiency and L1 reading ability to L2 reading performance: A test of the threshold hypothesis in an EFL context. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 713–739. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Linnenbrink-Garcia, L., Rogat, T. K., Koskey, K. L. (2011). Affect and engagement during small group instruction. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36, 13–24. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Lu, X. (2010). Automatic analysis of syntactic complexity in second language writing. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 15, 474–496. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Lysaker, J. T., Tonge, C., Gauson, D., Miller, A. (2011). Reading and social imagination: What relationally oriented reading instruction can do for children. Reading Psychology, 32, 520–566. Google Scholar | |
|
Miall, D. S., Kuiken, D. (1994). Foregrounding, defamiliarization, and affect: Response to literary stories. Poetics, 22, 389–407. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Miall, D. S., Kuiken, D. (1999). What is literariness? Three components of literary reading. Discourse Processes, 28, 121–138. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Miall, D. S., Kuiken, D. (2002). A feeling for fiction: Becoming what we behold. Poetics, 30, 221–241. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Multon . (2010). Interrater reliability. In Salkind, N. J. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of research design (pp. 627–629). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Google Scholar | |
|
Nassaji, H. (2007). Schema theory and knowledge-based processes in second language reading comprehension: A need for alternative perspectives. Language Learning, 57, 79–113. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Oatley, K. (1999). Meetings of minds: Dialogue, sympathy, and identification, in reading fiction. Poetics, 26, 439–454. Google Scholar | |
|
Pavlenko, A. (2007). Emotions and multilingualism. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Pekrun, R. (2000). A social-cognitive, control-value theory of achievement emotions. In Heckhausen, J. (Ed.), Motivational psychology of human development (pp. 143–163). Oxford, England: Elsevier. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
|
Pekrun, R., Elliot, A. J., Maier, M. A. (2009). Achievement goals and achievement emotions: Testing a model of their joint relations with academic performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 115–135. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Titz, W., Perry, R. P. (2002). Academic emotions in students’ self-regulated learning and achievement: A program of qualitative and quantitative research. Educational Psychologist, 37, 91–105. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Reutzel, D. R., Hollingsworth, P. M. (1991). Investigating topic-related attitude: Effect on reading and remembering text. The Journal of Educational Research, 84, 334–344. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Rosenblatt, L. (1978). The reader, the text, the poem. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Sadoski, M., Goetz, E. T., Kangiser, S. (1988). Imagination in story response: Relationships between imagery, affect, and structural importance. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 320–336. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Sadoski, M., Goetz, E. T., Olivarez, A., Lee, S., Roberts, N. M. (1990). Imagination in story reading: The role of imagery, verbal recall, story analysis, and processing levels. Journal of Literacy Research, 22, 55–70. Google Scholar | |
|
Saito, Y., Garza, T. J., Horwitz, E. K. (1999). Foreign language reading anxiety. The Modern Language Journal, 83, 202–218. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Sellers, V. D. (2000). Anxiety and reading comprehension in Spanish as a foreign language. Foreign Language Annals, 33, 512–520. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Shin, S. K. (2012). “It cannot be done alone”: The socialization of novice English teachers in South Korea. TESOL Quarterly, 46, 542–567. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
|
Tompkins, J. P. (Ed.). (1980). Reader-response criticism: From formalism to post-structuralism. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Trainor, J. S. (2008). The emotioned power of racism: An ethnographic portrait of an all-white high school. College Composition and Communication, 60, 82–112. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Villavicencio, F. T., Bernardo, A. B. I. (2013). Positive academic emotions moderate the relationship between self-regulation and academic achievement. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 329–340. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI | |
|
Zwaan, R. A., Dijkstra, K., Graesser, A. C. (1993, 6). Components of understanding literary narrative. Paper presented at the Third Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse, Boulder, CO. Google Scholar | |
|
Zwaan, R. A., Radvansky, G. A. (1998). Situation models in language comprehension and memory. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 162–185. Google Scholar | Crossref | Medline | ISI |

