THE ROLE OF TOPIC IN EFL LEARNER’S READING COMPREHENSION AND RECALL

English as a Foreign Language reading comprehension and recall can be affected by a large number of discoursal factors, including |topic” and “title” as representative of the theme of the text. The present study aimed at examining the effect of text topic on foreign language learnersʹ reading comprehension and recall. To this end, the impact of three kinds of text topics, i.e., major topic, minor topic and unrelated topics was measured on foreign language learnersʹ reading comprehension and recall. The materials of the experiment were piloted in advance on learners (n = 100) of the same proficiency level. 99 EFL learners majoring in English language translation in Mashhad Azad University participated in the main study. The instrumentation included CELT (The comprehensive English Language test) and a tailored reading comprehension test consisting of three reading passages. The Multiple Choice reading comprehension tests were administered to 3 homogenized groups each comprising 32, 30 and 36 subjects. Data were analyzed through one-way analysis of variance and post hoc Scheffe tests. The results showed a significant effect of major topic on the reading comprehension performances and recall of the participants.