The Relationship Between First‐ and Second‐Language Reading Comprehension of Occupation‐Specific Texts

Two within‐subject studies were conducted in which detailed discourse analysis techniques were used to analyze 27 nursing students' comprehension of texts typically found in their anticipated workplace (Montreal‐area hospitals) in both their first and second languages. The results of these studies support the argument that the use of second‐language production tends to underestimate and distort second‐language comprehension, at least at intermediate levels of second‐language proficiency. These studies also suggest that the lack of inferencing or higher‐level processing that has been attributed to second‐language comprehension may be a result of the assessment techniques used. Except when second‐language production was employed, the same factors appeared to affect recall and inference in both languages. These studies also stress the importance of text content and structure on text comprehension in either one's first or second language.