| For many years researchers believe that female and male have different reading preferences, females tend to read stories about human relations, beauty and domestic issues. For males, articles about gadget and sports attract them more compare to stories about human relations. These differences tacitly affect their background knowledge. A question, if their background knowledge would affect their reading comprehension performance, then arose. This study investigated the influence of gender related background knowledge in reading comprehension performance. This study involved 40 female and 40 male students of SMPK PENABUR Gading Serpong. The data is taken by giving them a pre-test questionnaire and a reading comprehension test, the writer then analyze their responses and test results. From the pre-questionnaire data, the writer found that female and male have different background knowledge, e.g. females know more about diet program and read more advice column in a magazine. On the other hand, males are more familiar with football and gadget. Nevertheless, their reading comprehension test results do not show that their background knowledge affect their reading comprehension performance. |