The Influence of Interest on Reading Comprehension in EFL Students.

Abstract

The present study explored the influence of interest on reading comprehension in English as a Foreign Language Students (EFL). Another of this study’s concerns was whether individual interest, which is optimal for learning but difficult to control in classroom settings, might be increased by use of situational and topic interest, which are less favorable to learning but more controllable by teachers. A third focus concerned the validity of defining topic interest by text title versus text contents. Results indicated that high interest did not result in improved reading comprehension. Participant reports of individual interest in a topic increased significantly upon reading a text whose contents were endowed with interesting but unrelated elements. The difference between evaluation of topic interest before and after reading a text was found to be significant as well, suggesting that topic interest might be most accurately evaluated by response to text instead of less informative text titles.