THE ROLE OF TEXT FAMILIARITY AND IQ IN READING COMPREHENSION AND RECALL PROCESS OF A GROUP OF IRANIAN ADVANCE STUDENTS

This study is designed to find more evidence of the role of background knowledge as well as intelligence quotient (IQ) in reading comprehension and recall of students in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) situations. The study was conducted in three succeeding phases. First, 90 subjects took the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) test. The results enabled the researcher to select 20 subjects in advance level for the study. In the second phase, an IQ test was administered to measure the intelligence level of the subjects. In the third phase, a questionnaire and four reading comprehension texts were administered. The students were supposed to read the questions on the questionnaire and answer them to decide their level of familiarity with the texts. Then, based on their answers two texts were considered familiar and two unfamiliar. The subjects were supposed to read the texts and write their recalls on a separate sheet of paper. Finally, the recall protocols were analyzed. The result of the t-tests showed that background knowledge did not have effects on reading comprehension and the recall of the texts. The correlation procedures further showed that IQ and recall were correlated but it was not significant. Based on the results it can be inferred that in advance level other factors such as reading strategies can play a role in comprehension.