Analysis of the Effect of Content Familiarity and Gender on English as a Foreign Language Reading Comprehension by Spanish University Students

The aim of this paper is to explore the relative effects of gender and content familiarity on English as a Foreign Language reading comprehension. Sixty-eight elementary and intermediate level undergraduate English language students at the Facility of Teacher Training of the University of Oviedo participated in the study. The results of the study show that gender and content familiarity significantly affected the students' overall comprehension of the texts. The study appears to reject the so-called linguistic threshold hypothesis as both the elementary level and intermediate level readers of the study could read with better understanding when the text was familiar, irrespective of their language knowledge and also seems to support the interactive view of L2 reading comprehension.