Comprehending Written Discourse in an EFL Classroom

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to shed light on the concepts and elements involved in written discourse comprehension   on the part of EFL learners. The question that should be raised is the following: what are the elements involved in the process of written discourse comprehension? The review of literature reveals that the concepts of cohesion, coherence, context, prior knowledge, and pragmatics are the building blocks of this process. Besides the linguistic knowledge, EFL readers have to take advantage of discourse knowledge as well. Comprehending written discourse implies that readers recognise the message being transmitted by using their pragmatic knowledge. They also need, in fact, to know the intended readership.