Senior College ESL Students' Reading Comprehension Level of a Technical Text

_{This study aimed to determine the senior college ESL students' reading comprehension level of a technical text, to identify the effect of prior knowledge on students' reading comprehension, and to find out if there is a significant difference in the students' prior knowledge before and after reading the technical text.}

_{This study is a quantitative type of research that used the pre-experimental method using a technical text as a stimulus material.  Forty (40) senior college Civil Engineering students were given a pretest before they read the stimulus material, a technical text used in the discipline, and finally they had a posttest. The results were compared to determine difference in scores.}

_{Major finding of this study showed that senior college ESL students still have difficulties in reading a technical text even though the topic presented in the material is related to their field of study.  However, it is also noted that the students’ prior knowledge increased as a result of their exposure to the text, which led to a significant difference between the test scores.}

_{The study concluded that a technical text appears difficult even for students who are expected to have a good grasp about it. This could be due to the language used which is English, a second language for the student respondents, or it could be that they need more exposure to the text and more years to internalize the demands of their own discipline. Lastly, exposing students to technical texts improves their prior knowledge which consequently yield better comprehension score.}         

_{The study recommends further studies on other disciplines where technical texts serve as stimuli across year levels of different prior knowledge and different area of specialization to determine other factors that help comprehension, aside from prior knowledge brought to the reading task of highly technical material such as the one used in this study. Likewise, it is recommended to consider suitability of the texts to the discipline of the students, especially in test construction and text selection so that no single text and test are uniformly provided to students.}