Effects of Korean Students’ Contextual and Lexical Knowledge on L2 Text Comprehension

This empirical study evaluates the factors that influence Korean students’ reading comprehension of target culture-embedded texts in the US. These texts contain US socio-cultural facts and words that represent native speakers’ beliefs, norms, and values in their daily lives. They also introduce diverse word meanings depending on each context. Through this study, I found that the most important factors influencing the Korean students’ comprehension of a target culture-embedded text are their lack of US cultural knowledge and US culture-embedded lexical knowledge. These factors were linked to the students’ poor meaning-making strategy in comprehending US culture-embedded texts appropriately. Contextual and lexical knowledge is a necessary factor for Korean students to make appropriate meaning and better comprehend US culture-embedded texts through diverse exposures in EFL reading classes.