The effect of students' academic discipline on their performance on ESP reading tests

Abstract

This paper briefly reviews two earlier studies of the effect of student background knowledge on reading comprehension, then goes on to report a third study into the same effect. The paper draws the conclusion that the test results obtained in the study can be accounted for in terms of an interaction between background knowledge and linguistic proficiency. The paper closes with some observations on the broad concepts 'linguistic proficiency' and 'background knowledge'.