In order to determine the influence of religion-specific background knowledge on the listening comprehension of ESL
students, Markham and Latham (1987) used passages describing prayer rituals of Islam and Christianity. The data
indicated that religious background influences listening comprehension. The subjects in this study recalled more
information and provided more elaborations and fewer distortions for the passage that related to their own religion.
Long (1990) conducted an exploratory study of background knowledge and L2 listening comprehension. Her
third-quarter students of Spanish listened to two passages, one familiar and the other unfamiliar. Comprehension was
assessed by a recall protocol in English, a recognition measure, and a checklist comprised of true-false statements
referring to the content of the passage. Although the English summaries revealed a higher proportion of correct idea
units for the familiar topic, no significant differences were found between the familiar and unfamiliar passages in the
recognition measure.