EFL Learners' Sensitivity to Linguistic and Discourse Factors in the Process of Anaphoric Resolution

Abstract

The readers' ability to integrate current information with given information has been considered as an important component of reading comprehension process. One aspect of this integration process involves anaphoric resolution. The purpose of this study is to investigate the process of anaphoric resolution, focusing on inferential rigidity of different types of anaphoric ties. Ninety EFL learners were selected from the accessible population of undergraduate EFL students at a university in Iran. In this study an anaphoric resolution test, containing 30 different expository texts, was used. The participants were asked to underline the antecedents of the anaphors. Once the data was collected and scored, it was subjected to a number of appropriate statistical procedures. The Results of the analysis of variance revealed a significant effect of different types of anaphoric ties, F (4, 87) = 10.28, p

Keywords

• Anaphoric ties
• Anaphoric resolution
• Linguistic factors
• Discourse factors
• Inferential rigidity
• Expository texts