Do Content Area Passages Affect Student Performance on Reading Comprehension Tests?

A study conducted in Israel investigated the relevance of subject-specific reading passages to performance on reading comprehension tests for advanced university students of English as a second language. The research specifically examined (1) whether students performed better when the reading test content was directly related to their field of study or when the content was in another field but of comparable difficulty and comprehensible to the educated layman, and (2) whether the position of a text in a multiple-text exam affects reading comprehension performance. Results showed that comprehension was affected in some cases by content, but less than expected, a finding possibly explained by individuals' English reading competence or by the broad groupings of fields of study (science and technology, humanities, and biology). The order of presentation did not seem to affect performance, which has implications for situations in which different forms of the same test are desirable. (MSE)