A study on effects of background knowledge upon Ungku Omar Polytechnic Ipoh Students reading comprehension

Schema Theory describes the process by which readers combine their own background knowledge with  new information from the text the readers are reading. Readers carry different  schemata  which are  often content/culture specitic. To enable readers to form connections between pre existing background  knowledge and new knowledge from the text, pre reading tasks are often designed to build or  activate the reader" s schemata. This research paper looked into the effects of background knowledge upon Ungku Omar P0lytechnic  (PUO) students reading comprehension, looking into the English for Specitic Purposes (ESP)  students· achievement in reading familiar and unfamiliar text. In addition, this research paper  looked at the influence of the training sessions to activate /induced background knowledge. Lastly  this research paper looked at the role of vocabulary in enhancing PUO ESP students· reading comprehension. This research adopted an experimental study of fifty eight elementary level students from the  engineering and business field. The students involved were in their third semester.  The  instruments chosen were engineering and business text. A  pre  and  post test  was  administered  with  training sessions in between. Brainstorming sessions. semantic mapping and discussions were  conducted to build, stimulate or induced students background knowledge. The results obtained from  the two test confirmed that there is positive significant difference in the PlJO ESP students' reading comprehension before and after training.