A reading assessment with cross-cultural implications: preliminary explorations

Success in reading is central to success in education. This paper argues that reading in a second language is strongly affected by variations in text organization. Such variations are a reflection of first language influences and related differences in cultural identities and are a part of discourse competence. Details of an experiment in Hong Kong, China, are given. This attempts to show how different text (rhetorical) organizations are interpreted and understood differently by different groups of second language readers. Results show significant variation in the comprehensibility of different text organizations and reasons for these differences are discussed.