Second language readers’ comprehension of a poem: exploring contextual and linguistic aspects

Seventy‐three ESL students from three groups (seventh‐grade, university intermediate, and university advanced) served as subjects in an exploratory psycholinguistic experiment designed to investigate the roles of context and selected linguistic structures on comprehension. Subjects read a free‐verse poem in one of three context conditions: full context , in which both a picture and the poem's title accompanied the poem; partial context , in which only the title accompanied it; and no context , in which neither picture nor title accompanied it. In free‐ and probed‐recall results, no significant effects were found for context. Group membership was significant for probed inferential recall of micropopositions. High‐level propositions in the text hierarchy were better recalled than low‐level propositions. No interaction reached significance. These findings suggest that ESL students tend to focus on literal language and need additional instruction in making inferences.