Research by Gatbonton and Tucker (1971) showed that due to cultural misunderstandings, EFL students drew incorrect assumptions when reading unfamiliar texts; however, when provided with pertinent cultural information, their performance increased significantly. Similar findings were reported by Yousef (1968). Steffensen, Joag‐dev, and Anderson (1979) demonstrated that implicit cultural knowledge presupposed by a text and the reader's own cultural background knowledge interact to make texts based on one's own culture easier to read and understand than syntactically and rhetorically equivalent texts based on less familiar, more distant cultures. Johnson (1981) demonstrated that the cultural origin of a text has a greater effect on ESL reading comprehension than does linguistic complexity.The related pedagogical question is: “Can we improve students' reading by helping them to build background knowledge on the topic prior to reading?” Available pedagogical research in English as a first language suggests an affirmative answer to this question (Stevens 1982). The present study investigated this question for English as a second language. Using pre‐ and posttests with experimental and control groups of intermediate‐level ESL students, half of each group receiving syntactically more complex versions of the test passages than the other half, the experimental group was taught appropriate cultural background information between pre‐ and posttesting.Results showed that by providing the students with first‐hand experiential knowledge, reading comprehension, as measured by objective tests as well as by a free written recall test, was facilitated. Differences in the syntactic complexity showed no significant effect on ESL reading