关键词: 语篇连贯; 人称叙事; 阅读推论表现; 因果顺叙; 因果倒叙; EFL语境; 大学英语阅读教学

Abstract:

This study, which included 140 first-year non-English majors as participants, attempts to explore the effects of textual factors on the inference performance in English reading comprehension. The results are as follows. First, the causal sequence context is more conducive to the participants’ inference performance than is the causal flashback context, as it allows them to expend fewer cognitive resources to process the causal relationship when reading. Second, the prominent effect of the first-person perspective needs to be highlighted in medium-length stories with relatively simple plots, as this assists the participants to participate more actively in the inference of contextual patterns. Third, text coherence and narrative perspective have an interactive effect on the participants’ inference performances. In causal sequence order, the dominant effect of the first-person perspective is superior to that of the third-person perspective. The results increase the understanding of the roles that are played by textual elements in reading inference, thus clarifying the impact mechanism of text coherence and narrative perspective on reading inference.

Keywords: text coherence; narrative perspective; reading inference performance; causal sequence version; causal flashback version; EFL context; college English reading teaching