Abstract
A questionnaire composed of 10 paired adjectives ranked on a 7 point-scale was given at a Japanese university to confirm the ‘emotional aspect’ of familiarity and measure images of 20 unit titles of a textbook. After hearing three passages twice each, respondents first answered 6 or 16 TF questions (2, 5, 5 min), then answered a 7 point-scale questionnaire about their prior knowledge of the three topics. In particular a factor of emotional aspect found in the factor analysis named ‘closeness’ was ranked as a sub concept of familiarity. The highest title, the lowest one, and the third one were adopted as ‘the most familiar-’, ‘the least familiar-’ and ‘for-training title’. The results showed statistically siginificant superiority of the most familiar title over the least familiar one. A significant main effect of title familiarity on the scores of the subjects’ first TOEIC Half test score level (then academic achievement), no interaction between title familiarity and the subjects’ first TOEIC Half test score level, and no correlation between TF score for the most familiar title and prior knowledge.
