Premium
The Influence of the Social Use and the History of Acquisition of Euskera on Comprehension and Recall of Scientific Texts in Euskera and Castilian
Author(s) -
Gorostiaga Arantxa,
Balluerka Nekane
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9922.00192
Subject(s) - comprehension , recall , psychology , linguistics , test (biology) , task (project management) , reading comprehension , cognitive psychology , reading (process) , paleontology , philosophy , management , economics , biology
This study examined the influence of the social use and the history of acquisition of Euskera (the Basque language) on comprehension and recall of two versions (Euskera –Castilian) of a scientific text read by bilingual high school and college students. Comprehension was measured by performance on an inferential task and recall by efficiency on a test that assessed recognition of essential and supplementary information in the text. Results suggested that both extensive social use and an active history of acquisition of a language improve the level of comprehension of a text written in that language. However, neither factor facilitated the recognition of essential information in the text. The possible implications of these results for education are discussed.