Language Text Comprehension: Differences Between Different Generations of a Society

Abstract

The generation gap is the disagreement between one generation and another over beliefs, policies, or values. The difference between the generations is a social reality and must be examined from different angles. In this study, we examined young readers’ comprehension along with the purpose of contributing to our understanding of the inventory, as well as the range of the semantic roles reproduced in the immediate oral recalls. The comprehension of an expository 200-word Russian text read by 22 Russian natives, aged nearly 10-11 years, was assessed with free recall. The revealed pattern of the inventory of the semantic roles both in the reading text and its recalls comprised two types, including main propositions and sub-propositions, the latter of which fell into agents, circumstances, and modifiers. The recalls matched the reading text in the inventory of the semantic roles defined. On the whole, the study indicated that respondents reproduce no more than 40% of the propositions in the reading text.

Keywords

• text comprehension
• generation gap
• society
• semantic roles
• russian natives