From a more pedagogical standpoint, suggestions have been made to u...

From a more pedagogical standpoint, suggestions have been made to use certain activities for activating readers’ existing schema or at least providing learners with crucial information about the topic they will be reading (Ajideh, 2003; Brown, 2001; Chastain, 1988; Chen & Graves, 1995; Grabe, 1991). The use of reading activities can promote strategic reading behaviors by students at pre-, while-, and postreading (Alyousef, 2006; Ur, 1996) stages. In turn, reading activities can promote interpretation of the text through the interaction between the reader and the text (Wallace, 1992) and thus play a vital role in schema activation in order to comprehend and interpret the text better (Chen & Graves, 1995; Grabe & Stoller, 2002). Despite the fairly well-documented impact of background knowledge on reading comprehension and a host of activities suggested, it still remains to be explored whether, or to what extent, the lack of cultural knowledge can be compensated through the use of reading activities. Erten and Karakaş (2007) noted that our knowledge on the value of these activities mainly stems from pedagogical recommendations or personal experiences and often lacks scientific scrutiny. Only a handful of studies have investigated which is more effective, using a particular activity on the same text (e.g., Karakaş, 2005) or making use of different activities on the same text with different groups of students (e.g., Chen & Graves, 1995; Erten & Karakaş, 2007; Shen, 2004).