چکیده (انگلیسی):

This study aims to explore Taiwanese students’ English learning in reading comprehension, with an emphasis
on factors of cultural familiarity and background knowledge. The function of this study is to explore the
influences of first and target language cultural materials on reading comprehension. The subjects of this
research were 50 Taiwanese junior college students who enrolled in the required English course in southern
Taiwan. The homogeneity of their English proficiency level was established according to the administration
of the Joint College Entrance Exam. The researcher applied a questionnaire utilizing the five point Likert
Scale to see how cultural familiarity and prior background knowledge affect reading comprehension. The
results of this study revealed that EFL students thought that they had better possess prior cultural knowledge
to be able to understand English contents easily. It also suggests that cultural familiarity and background
knowledge had significant effects on promoting reading comprehension of intermediate EFL learners.