Volume 29, Issue 5, 2020


DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.1039

The Role of Prior & Actual Situational Context in Routine Comprehension by Chinese Learners of English: The Effect of Proficiency & Study-Abroad Experience


Abstract
This study explored the role of prior (PC) and actual situational context (ASC) in decontextualized routine comprehension under the effect of proficiency and study-abroad (SA) experience. A pilot study was initially conducted with 41 native English speakers to determine the target responses as the baseline. Definitions and examples were elicited through a 7-item oral, computer-animated comprehension task completed by 143 Chinese learners of English using “Nawmal”, an internet-based animated movie site. Elicited definitions were utilized to investigate meanings that learners assigned to routines based on their PC knowledge, and examples were elicited to detect the functional use to which participants put routines in a fictitious conversation in an ASC. Proficiency bore a negligible relation to routine comprehension alongside any required context knowledge, but SA experience played a decisive role at most levels. Participants tended to offer plausible definitions of routines based on their PC knowledge instead of providing made-up examples that fit within an ASC. Plausible definition-example mappings indispensably resided in the interplay between learners’ actual situational and prior context knowledge

Keywords
routine comprehension; prior & actual situational context; Chinese learners of English; proficiency; study-abroad experience

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