THE INFLUENCE OF LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AND COMPREHENSION SKILL ON SITUATION-MODEL CONSTRUCTION

This study examines the influence of language proficiency and comprehe nsion skill on situation-model construction during narrative comprehen sion. Twelve college students who were enrolled in a third-semester Fr ench course thought aloud during the comprehension of English and Fren ch stories. After each text, the students performed a verb-clustering task. Scores on these two tasks indicate that the students generated m ore explanatory inferences in English than in French, and constructed stronger situation models in English than in French. In addition, skil led comprehenders generated more explanatory inferences and stronger s ituation models than less skilled comprehenders. The implications of t hese findings for current theories of text comprehension and individua l differences are discussed.