The Influence of Religion‐Specific Background Knowledge on the Listening Comprehension of Adult Second‐Language Students

This article describes a study assessing the influence of religious‐specific background knowledge on adult ESL listening comprehension. Sixty‐five university‐level students participated in the study. Twenty‐eight students self‐reported being religion‐neutral with virtually no knowledge of Moslem or Christian religious rites. Sixteen of the students declared themselves to be practicing Moslems, and twenty students reported being practicing Christians. The students listened to one passage describing the prayer rituals of Islam and a second passage describing the prayer rituals of Christianity. The results clearly suggest that passage content exerts a powerful influence on the listening comprehension scores of students professing close ties to a particular religion. Particularly strong differences were observed regarding the recall of major idea units. Less striking, yet obviously supportive differences were in evidence with respect to the creation of schema‐appropriate elaborations and inappropriate distortions. The religion‐neutral students performed somewhat erratically in that they recalled more major idea units pertaining to the Moslem passage, but also provided more appropriate elaborations regarding the Christian passage. In addition, retrospective interviews that yielded insightful information that generally supported the quantitative findings were conducted.