EXTENSIVE READING II
CONTENT SCHEMA
AND
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE
By:
GROUP
IV
1.
Nelly
Rosanti
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11.411.146
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2.
Mawardi
|
11.411.117
|
3.
Miftahul Yuda
|
11.411.108
|
4.
Haris Prasetya
|
11.411.145
|
5. Ahmad Rizal
|
11.411.1
|
INSTITUTE OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND
EDUCATION
( IKIP MATARAM )
2013
PREFACE
Thanks
to our God who has given us the good body and good thinks
so that we can write our assignment until finished like this
now.
The
secondly is not forget we say thanks to
our prophet (Muhammad SAW)who has bring
us from the darkness to the brightness of the world ( Minazzulumati’illannur’).
And
we say thanks to our lecture Mrs. Husnul Khomatimah who have be ready to teach
us “Extensive reading II” , so that we can understanding about it, and
could be finished our assignment like this now. We
realize there are many errors and
deficiencies in the writing of this paper. For that we expect to develop
advice and criticism
from various parties for the completion of further
articles.
Finally
we are hope this paper could be useful for the reader and authors in general.
Mataram,
December 29, 2013
Writer
TABLE OF CONTENT
PREFACE............................................................................................................................. i
BAB I INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................1
A.
BACKGROUND.......................................................................................................1
B.
FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM.................................................................3
BAB
II DISCUSSION............................................................................................................4
A.
CONTENT
SCHEMA AND BACGROUND KNOWLEDGE.............................4
The
definition of schema............................................................................................4
Schema
and schema theory........................................................................................5
The
types of schema.....................................................................................................5
The
functions of schema..............................................................................................6
Prior
knowledge and first language reading..............................................................6
Prior
knowledge and reading comprehension............................................................9
Formal
schemata and reading comprehension...........................................................9
Content
schemata and reading comprehension..........................................................10
Culture-specific
content schemata and reading comprehension...............................10
Cultural
differences......................................................................................................10
Implications
for reading teaching. ..............................................................................11
Background Knowledge Impacts
Reading Comprehension .....................................12
Background Knowledge Affects
Vocabulary Learning .............................................13
Background Knowledge
Contextualizes Historical Thinking ...................................13
Instructional Strategies to
Increase Background Knowledge ...................................14
B.
FORMAL SCHEMA AND SECOND LANGUAGE READING.............................17
Orthographic and phonemic knowledge.......................................................................17
Syntax and language structure.......................................................................................18
Text structure..................................................................................................................20
Narrative..........................................................................................................................21
Expository
text structure................................................................................................25
Instruction
in text structure...........................................................................................26
Expository text.................................................................................................................37
Text structure and second language
reading.................................................................42
Narrative text structure...................................................................................................42
BAB
III CLOSED........................................................................................................................47
A.
CONCLUTION................................................................................................................47
B.
REFERENCES................................................................................................................48
BAB I
INTRODUCTION
A. BACKGROUND
The literature on reading notes two different types of
SCHEMA, or background knowledge, that the reader brings to bear on a text. The
first class of prior knowledge has to do with content schema relevant to the
content area and culture knowledge. An example of this is the ‘ship
christening’ schema that was presented
in Chapter 2 in the discussion of Anderson and pearson’s (1984)
schema-theoretic model of reading. The
second type schema is formal schema. This represents the background
knowledge the reader has regarding how
syntax is used to structure text, cohesive relations, and the rhetorical
organization of different text type. This chapter will focus on concerns of
content schema, or background knowledge , while the next chapter will focus on
formal schema issues.
Before proceeding, a
note about terminology in schema
theory needs to be made. The term schema is
some times used as a singular term with schemata
as the plural noun form. However, the literature also often uses the term schema in a generic or non-count sense
as a term such as ‘schema theoretic’ or ‘types of schema’. Further, a schema
may be very well developed and robust , as in all of the things that we would
accept might take place in church. It may not be the case that an individual
has one schema for the sermon, another for Sunday school, and yet another for
communion. In one of the earliest uses of the term, Kant (1963, Smith
translation) writes:
Indeed,
it is schema, not images of objects, which underlie our pure sensible concepts.
No image could ever be adequate to the concept of a triangle in general. It
would never attain that universality of the concept which renders it valid of
all triangles, whether right-angle, obtuse-angled, or acute-angled; it would
always be limited to a part only of this sphere. The schema of the triangle can
exist nowhere but in thought…. This schematism of our understanding, in its
application to appearances and their mere form, is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real
modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze.
This much only we can assert: the image
is a product of the empirical faculty of reproductive imagination; the schema
of sensible concept, such as figures in space, is a product and, as it were, a
monogram, of pure a priori imagination, though which, and accordance with
which, images themselves first become possible. These images can be
connected with the concept only be means
of the schema to which they belong. In themselves, they are never completely
congruent with the concept. On the other hand, the schema of a pure concept of
understanding can never be brought into any image whatsoever. (Kant1963: 182-3)
The term is used in its
generic form here, meaning all possible triangles and ‘images connected with a
concept by means of the schema to which they belong’. This usage will continue
here, incorporating the plural, schemata
of plural distinctly referring multiple instances.
Introduction to content
and culture schema
As noted the discussion
in chapter 2 of Anderson and pearson’s (1984) schema-theoretic view of reading,
an area of major of importance in the reading process relates to how background
knowledge/schemata and cultural understanding affect text comprehension. As
Freire and Macedo (1987) state:
Reading
does not consist merely of decoding the written word of language; rather it is
preceded by and intertwined with
knowledge of the world. Language and reality are dynamically interconnected.
The understanding attained by critical reading of the text implies perceiving
the relationship between text and content. (Anderson and Pearson 1984)
Background knowledge
plays a role in terms of facts known and assumptions held about the world, what
have been termed script, plans, or goals (Shank and Ableson 1977). Here we
refer to the nature of a reader’s default concepts about evens and settings.
Prior knowledge may have a facilitating effect because a reader who already has
an elaborate schema can more easily fit incoming textual information into that
schema. Background knowledge can also be related to values and judgments that
are made about an event by a reader, values that are due to social experience
and cultural mores. Both of these aspects of background knowledge will affect
the extent to which a second language reader constructs meaning that is in any
way consistent whit the meaning a first language reader likely to construct, as
well as whether two first language or two second language readers construct the
same meaning. As Malik (1990) states, echoing Goodman (1984), ‘because
comprehension results from reader-text transaction, what the reader knows, who
the reader is, what values guide the reader, and what purposes or interests the
reader has will play a vital role in the reading process’ (207).
However, the reader’s
background knowledge does not simply represent the contents of a repository
filled with random relevant and irrelevant ideas. The background knowledge also
reflects expectations of importance, relevance, and structure. Sometimes these
expectations reflect biases, and these colored expatiations can become goals
and self-fulfilling prophecies in the comprehension process. When considering
the role of background knowledge, we
should not view schema as controlling immutable structures. If this were so, we
would be hard-pressed to explain how to learning and conceptual change take
place. Rather, the knowledge structures are part of more complex coding that
involves propositional representation, bottom-up-word-meaning generation, and
mental imaging. These is an interaction among all of these coding sources
(Nassaji 2002;Sadoski 1999). The application of mental representations involves
processes of constraint satisfaction through which the reader determines the
extent to which the emerging message is consistent, or satisfying.
B.
FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM
1.
WHAT IS SCHEMA?
2.
WHAT IS FORMAL SCHEMA?
BAB II
DISCUSSION
A.
CONTENT
SCHEMA AND BACGROUND KNOWLEDGE
The definition of schema
The basic premise of schema theory is that text is
ambiguous. As Carrell and Eisterhold (1983) write, “... text, any text, whether
written or spoken, does not by itself carry meaning. Rather, according to
schema theory, a text only provides directions for listeners or readers as to
how they should retrieve or construct meaning from their own, previously
acquired knowledge” (p 76). Thus, our background knowledge affects our
interpretation of the text. To illustrate, let me provide these two examples.
a) The
car was too expensive.
b) The
coffee was too expensive.
Our
interpretation of the word ‘expensive’ in sentence (a) is likely to be very
different from our interpretation of the same word in sentence (b). From our
life experiences we know the typical price of a car as well as the typical
price of an expensive car, and we know expensive coffee, in a normal world,
will always be cheaper. Anderson and Pearson (1984), citing a study done by
Halff, Ortony and Anderson (1976), write that a person’s interpretation of the
color red is different in each of the following compounds: red strawberry, red
barn, red sunset and red hair (p 52). Thus, our background knowledge, and the
context in which the word is placed, affects our interpretation of that word.
Further,
our interpretation of text is influenced by what we have read before. Notice
how the sentence, ‘He didn’t have enough money’, can be interpreted differently
in the following examples.
c)
The car was too expensive. He didn’t have enough money
d)
The coffee was too expensive. He didn’t have enough money
In
sentence (c), ‘He didn’t have enough money’, is likely to be interpreted as he
didn’t have enough savings, whereas in sentence (d) he probably has enough
money at home or in the bank, but he doesn’t have enough money on him right
now. From the above definitions, we may conclude that schema is the prior
knowledge gained through experiences stored in one’s mind. It is an abstract
structure of knowledge.
Schema and schema theory
Schemata
are based on the assumption that knowledge stored in our mind is well-organized
rather than randomly structured. They form independently by virtue of the
contents each schema contains. On the other hand they are related by nodes,
which enable them to communicate when necessary. Nearly all cognitive
definitions of schema stem from Bartlett "An active organization of past
reactions of past experiences, which must always be supposed to be operation in
any well-adapted organic response.
From
the above definitions, we may argue that knowledge or learning is constructed
from experience and stored in memory and opposed to knowledge existing on a
page. Every one of us has a uniquely personal store of knowledge gained through
experiences in his or her lifetime. This stored knowledge along with its
storage structure is called schemata . This term is often used in its singular
form--schema-- that refers to an organized chunk of knowledge or experience,
often accompanied by feelings or emotions associated with experience at the
time the information was stored. Take eating out in a restaurant for example.
When we go to a restaurant, we expect certain
things
to happen--we are seated and given menus; we are given some time, then someone
asks us what we want; we order, then wait; our food comes and we eat it; they
take our plates and give us our bills; we pay our bill with money in our
wallet.
The types of schema
Researchers
have identified several types of schemata. In literacy it is often said that
there are three types of schemata: language schemata, formal schemata and
content schemata, which are closely related to reading comprehension.
The functions of schema
There
are two processes in the utilization of schema: schema identification and
schema application. The former one is essentially a pattern recognition process
and a data- driven process, that is, the schema is essentially activated by
information that is available to the reader just before the schema is
identified. There are at least two factors that influence the course of schema
identification. The first one is goodness-of-it--the appropriate schema has a
high likelihood of being identified if there is good match between the target
schema and the information that has accrued. The second one is the amount of
information that accrues--as the amount of information increases, there
generally is a higher likelihood that appropriate schema will be identified.
Once a schema has been identified, the schema invokes a number of processes in
a conceptually driven fashion, which is governed by the content and procedures
provided by the schema. The reading schema mainly has the following functions:
1
Providing background knowledge
2.Generating
expectations
3.Facilitating
inferences
4.Focusing
the reader's attention
Prior knowledge and first language
reading
This
chapter examines the effects that background knowledge has been shown
through research to have on text
comprehension and recall. A fairly rich tradition of studies in this area
exist, and indicates how background knowledge can affect comprehension, even
among children; who might be expected to have less well developed and
internalized background schemata than adults. Dochi (1994) summarizes results
which indicate that 30 per cent to 60 per cent of reading test variability can be
explained by prior knowledge. For example, Lipson (1983) studied the effect of
background knowledge on the reading performance of children in the fourth
through sixth grades who were of
differing religious backgrounds. The subjects were from two subcultures within
a larger society, Catholic and Jewish. Half of the subjects (n=160 were Catholics attending a
private Catholic school and half (n=16)
were Jewish attending a Hebrew day school. Each of the subjects read three
passages: a culturally neutral passage entitled The Ama , a passage entitled First
Communion , and a passage entitled Bar
Mitzuah. After reading each passage, the subjects wrote a free recall of
everything they remembered about the passage and answered ten recall
questions. Lipson found a significant
effect for group by passage in terms of reading time, with each group taking
less time to read the culturally familiar passage. The analysis further
found that the groups recalled more
explicit and implicit propositional
information from the familiar passage than from the less familiar
passage. A similar pattern was found for the recall questions. The results
support the concepts that background knowledge may assist in comprehension of a
text. However, it is also important to note that the subject tended to make
more errors in their interpretation of the unfamiliar text, distortions such as
thinking that the Torah was something to be worn or that communication wafer
was left behind by Jesus. Thus, schemata that mismatch the context of the target
text can create distortions and intrusions that are perhaps as detrimental to comprehension as a complete absence of
prior knowledge.
It
appears from the research that prior knowledge of a topic increases the amount
of information that recalled from a text on that topic. Reynolds et al. (1982)
also report on the effects of personal knowledge and cultural background on
text interpretation. In their study, African-American and white eighth graders
read a letter about an incident at school that could be interpreted as either a
school cafeteria fight or as an instance of ‘sounding’. ‘sounding’ is a type of ritual insult found
primarily in the African-American community. The object of sounding is to
establish status in the peer group by demonstrating skill at insulting the
opponent’s family members and making derogatory allusions regarding the
personal attributes and behaviors of those relatives. The students in the study
read a sort letter allegedly written by a boy to a friend who have move away.
The letter described a school day, highlighting an episode in the school
cafeteria. Again, the episode could be interpreted as a fight in the cafeteria
or as an instance of sounding. The results suggest that cultural schemata
influence reading comprehension. African-American subjects tended to indicate
that the text was about a sounding scenario, while the white students
interpreted the text as being about an actual fight. Reynolds et al.
hypothesize that culture influences knowledge and that knowledge affects reading
comprehension.
Further,
a great deal of the first language research has demonstrated that prior
knowledge significantly affects memory performance over and above aptitude
(Mart and Gormley 1982; Schneyder, Korkel, and Weinert 1989). Given that
background knowledge ca affect recall of information from a text, a question
arises as to relationship between background knowledge and reading ability in
text comprehension. Recht and Leslie (1988) examined whether prior knowledge or
reading expertise had the greater effect on recall. They note that research has
indicated that good readers have better recall than do poor readers (Ryan
1981), and that good and poor readers have been found to have similar
short-term recall when text topic is familiar (Taylor 1979). Recht and Lislie
divided 64 seventh and eighth-grade student into four categories of reading
ability and knowledge about the sport of baseball: 1)
high-ability/high-knowledge; 2)high-ability/low-knowledge;
3)low-ability/high-knowledge; 4)low-ability/low-knowledge. The subjects read a
passage describing a half inning of a baseball game. A replica of a baseball
field was presented along with wooden figures of baseball players. The subjects
moved the players to re-enact the reading passage and also provided a verbal
account of the action. Subsequently, they were asked to recall the passage and
sort randomly selected sentences from the passage into their importance for the
narrative. The analysis showed that the memory recalls of the high-knowledge
readers were significantly better than the recalls of the low-knowledge
readers, regardless of reading ability, both quantitatively and quantitatively
on the re-enactment activity, the verbal retelling, and the recall
summarization. Further, subjects with low knowledge but high reading ability
did not score better than the low-knowledge/low-ability subjects. Thus, high
knowledge of topic appears to provide a support that takes a load off
short-term memory and allows for compensation for lower general reading
ability.
Although
background knowledge has shown to assist compensation by challenged readers, it
is important to take into account Lipson’s (1983)finding that background
knowledge can also distort and intrude into the reading process. That is, the
reader’s reliance on background knowledge can be disadvantageous at times. Two
studies (Reutzel and Hollingsworth 1992; Reynolds et al. 1982) provide evidence
that while a text may be read with some fidelity in the short term, its
long-term reconstruction may reflect previously held opinions.
Prior knowledge and reading comprehension
Schema
theory proposes that readers possess different conceptual frameworks which they
bring to the reading of a text and which they use to make sense of what they
read.Many educators argue that knowledge is constructed from experience and
stored in memory as opposed to knowledge being absolute and absolute meaning
existing on a page. We all have a uniquely personal store of knowledge gained
through a lifetime of experience. This stored knowledge along with its storage
structure is called schemata, which refers to an organized chunk of knowledge
or experience, often accompanied by feelings or emotions associated with
experience at the time the information was stored. All human beings posses schemata
that they use to interpret the world. New information is processed according to
how it fits into these schemata. Information that does not fit into these
schemas may not be comprehended, or may not be comprehended correctly. This is
the reason why readers have a difficult time comprehending a text on a subject
they are not familiar with even if the person comprehends the meaning of the
individual words in the passage. Therefore, many reading theorists argue that
schema is the driving force .
From
what have been discussed above, it is easily to find that prior knowledge, in
the
form
of schema, influences our comprehension to a much greater degree than earlier
research would have suggested. So powerful is the influence of prior knowledge
on comprehension that Johnson and Pearson (1982) have found that prior
knowledge of a topic is a better predictor of comprehension than is either an
intelligence test score or a reading achievement test score.
Formal schemata and reading
comprehension
Formal
schemata are higher order structures containing knowledge of rhetorical
organization structures. Similarly, formal schemata's effects on reading
comprehension can also be tested by keeping the content of a text constant
while varying the rhetorical organization and having comparable groups of
subjects process each different rhetorical pattern. Various studies in both L1
and L2 show that text organization affect reading comprehension.
Content schemata and reading
comprehension
As
has been discussed in the former chapters, schemata are multiple knowledge
structures which include culture, beliefs, expectations, values, and other past
experiences which are used to comprehend the nature of things and events.
Content schemata refer to the knowledge relative to the content domain of the
reading passage.
Culture-specific content schemata
and reading comprehension
From
the above discussion we know that content has more influence on reading
comprehension. What should be mentioned is that one type of the content
schemata especially has a great and enormous influence on students' EFL reading
comprehension, that is, cultural-specific content schemata. The main reason
simply is that language and culture are closely related and learning a foreign
language is the learning of both language itself and its culture because there
are cultural differences which is considered to be one of the biggest obstacles
in English learning.Thus, this part will be intended to introduce the nature of
language learning's relationship with culture, and then the influence of
cultural-specific content schemata on
Cultural differences
As
we have got from social scientists, cultures differ from one another and each
culture is unique. Such differences are called cultural differences or cultural
diversities. Cultural differences here refer to the differences in cultures,
mainly those involving English language .
There
are some differences between Chinese and Western cultures, such as, kinship
terms, greetings, thanks and compliments, private and taboos. Cultural differences
are caused by different social customs, different models of thinking and
different concepts of value. The process of English learning is also a process
of culture learning. Buttjes (1990) argues that language acquisition does not
follow a universal sequence, but differs across cultures. The process of
becoming a competent member of society is realized through exchanges of
language in particular social situations. Thus, language must be learnt as an
integral part of learning about the target language's culture in order to gain
a deeper insight into the target language.
Take,
for example, the sentence "One interviewer eventually turned me down
because, he said, I lack eyeball contact.” In western cultures, there is a
saying, “Never trust a person who can’t look you in the eyes.” Eye contact is
very important during a conversation because too little eye contact may be seen
negatively by westerns, which is usually ignored by Chinese. The differences
may create barriers in Chinese students’ understanding of the sentence.
Therefore, culture learning will help promote language learning.
Implications for reading teaching
From
the theoretical discussion of schema theory and the survey of the situation of
the students’ schematic knowledge, it seems reasonable to state that schema
theory is of enormous significance in reading. In fact, English reading
teaching is not only a teaching of language points but also a teaching of the
culture, thus, it is meaningful and urgent to study various practical methods
of effective reading teaching associated with schema theory.
This
part will come to the practical purpose ---tentatively exploring the
implications from schema theory to English reading teaching. Since the major
trouble of students in the middle school environment lies in relevant schemata
background knowledge, in class, teachers should provide as much background
knowledge as possible for students, which will help students familiarize
themselves with the appropriate schemata that will be utilized in their
comprehension. After class, teachers should try to dream up as many useful
activities as possible to help students construct, increase and enrich their
schemata. The tentative suggestions are as follows:
1.
Accumulation of students' schemata
Individuals
acquire schemata through their experiences--- real and vicarious. As
individuals have more experiences, they refine, reshape, correct and
restructure their schemata. Through life experiences, schema adjustments are
made as readers continue having more and more experiences. So, their life
experiences will become various and much more abundant as the educated time
with teachers go by--both from the teachers and the teaching and reading
activities. In other words, teachers can help readers build and increase their
schemata through various methods or activities. Here are some suggestions as to
how to increase and enrich students' schematic knowledge.
2.
Activation of students' schemata
Because
reading materials are never completely explicit, readers must rely on
preexisting schemata to provide plausible interpretation. Yet, there is much
evidence that good and poor readers do not always use schemata appropriately or
are unaware of whether the information they are reading is consistent with
their existing prior knowledge. Also, there is evidence that students who do
not spontaneously use schemas as they read will engage them if given explicit
instructions prior to reading. Thus, pre-reading
3.
Construction of students' schemata
Students
can be taught to incorporate new information into their existing world
knowledge. This can be accomplished through teacher guided instruction and
self-initiated strategies that includes methods and meaningful materials that
induce critical thinking with conceptual problems. Four such strategies that
are designed to foster shared meaning between and among teachers and peers are:
cases, interactive videodiscs, hierarchical concept maps and Vee diagrams.
Background Knowledge
Impacts Reading Comprehension
Perhaps
the most well known effect of background knowledge is its ability to directly
influence the understanding of what is read (Stahl, Hare, Sinatra, &
Gregory, 1991). It makes perfect sense—the more you know about a topic, the
more likely it will be that you can comprehend what is written about it. For
instance, when reading an abstract of a scientific article (considered to be
the most difficult kind of text), educators are more likely to understand one
from the American Educational Research Journal than from the American
Journal of Nursing. It isn’t that you can’t decode the words or read them
fluently, but rather that you don’t have the background knowledge to understand
radiofrequency catheter ablation. The more extensive a reader’s background
knowledge is, the easier it is to acquire new information offered by the text
(Alfassi, 2004).
Background
knowledge also acts indirectly on reading comprehension. Fluency, an important
contributor to overall reading comprehension, is heavily impacted by the level
of background knowledge one possesses about a topic (Klauda & Guthrie,
2008). The ability to infer meaning in social studies texts is positively
influenced by the level of background knowledge the learner has (Tarchi, 2009).
Background Knowledge
Affects Vocabulary Learning
Vocabulary
is the means by which learning is articulated. Whether in writing or
discussion, the ability to use vocabulary accurately and incisively is a marker
of one’s command of a topic. In fact, vocabulary is often used as a proxy to
measure how learned a person is. Hart and Risley’s (1995) landmark study of
vocabulary knowledge at school entry age accurately predicted a child’s
achievement level years later. Similarly, Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) found that
vocabulary knowledge correlated to grades and standardized test scores.
In
social studies, vocabulary is explicitly tied to huge concepts that extend
beyond the sequential time lines of a single period. Words like population,
revolution, and migration describe concepts that “‘clump’
information in meaningful ways [to] allow students to handle the ‘long run’ of
history” (National Research Council, 2005, p. 69). Thus, a simple definition is
often inadequate for explaining how integral these concepts are to the study of
history or other social studies topics. This deep vocabulary meaning is built
through a growing bank of knowledge that is continually reorganized and
expanded. This deep bank is known as schema, a network of related knowledge
that forms a mental structure to understand complex systems. As new knowledge
is learned, the schema for the vocabulary becomes more sophisticated. Revolution
moves from defining a single event to being able to detect the
commonalities between the Glorious, American, and French Revolutions. Background
knowledge about these events leads to a deeper understanding of a new event.
Background Knowledge
Contextualizes Historical Thinking
To
understand history, one must be able to step away from specific content and
look for enduring understandings; he or she must also closely examine and
understand the time period being studied. It is not uncommon for students (and
even adults) at all levels to superimpose current or personal beliefs, values,
and mores onto events of the past. In some cases, these are valid. Societies of
the past and present recoil at the random taking of a human life, but they
differ when it comes to human sacrifice, political assassinations, crimes of
passion, etc. Knowledge of the time period being studied is needed in order to
understand how these events were perceived by contemporaries of the time—in
other words, to contextualize. As Reisman and Wineburg (2008) state:
Contextualized
historical thinking is impossible to accomplish without background knowledge.
One need not know everything about a historical moment, but a basic chronology
and some familiarity with key developments are fundamental. . . . Background
information allows students to decipher unfamiliar terms and create accurate
mental images as they read. Because teachers cannot expect students to know how
certain words were defined in the past or how today’s institutions differed,
such information must be provided. (p. 203)
Tarchi’s
(2009) study of seventh-grade students found that those who possessed a solid
bank of topical knowledge about history performed better on measures of reading
comprehension of history texts than students who lacked this foundation. The
author speculated that this was due in part to the discipline-specific need to
form causal relationships between events in order to understand their
significance, stating “the more facts the reader knows about a topic, the
better he/she will understand a text concerning that topic” (p. 419). The
background knowledge about an era serves to ground the new learning that will
occur in the lesson.
Instructional
Strategies to Increase Background Knowledge
Having
made the case that background knowledge is vital to learning history, it is
inadequate to stop there without discussing curricular and instructional
approaches to building this knowledge. These techniques ensure that background
knowledge is not overlooked in the rush to cultivate new learning. These
include teaching conceptually, teaching for transformation, and assessing
background knowledge in order to know where gaps may exist.
1)
Teach conceptually. History
is often unfairly perceived as the memorization of an endless list of events,
dates, and historical figures. Of course, it is far more than that, but
students can have a difficult time seeing the study of history as an
examination of the patterns that mark the human experience, the factors that
lead to the responses of leaders and societies, and the extraordinary events
that have signaled change. As well, it is rare for students to appreciate that
the historical record is not static, and that historians engage in debate and
critical analysis of events that occurred hundreds and even thousands of years
ago. But this is a logical, if incorrect, conclusion in classrooms where
isolated facts are emphasized at the expense of analysis.
An
important means for interrupting these misconceptions about the study of
history is to ground learning in enduring understandings, also known as big
ideas (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Introducing students to statements such as
“People, places, and ideas change over time” anchors the study of units as
diverse as the Articles of Confederation, Charlemagne, and ancient Greece. The
use of enduring understandings assists students in recognizing the patterns
that have defined thousands of years of human history.
Understanding
is further deepened through the use of essential questions that foster inquiry.
Essential questions differ from enduring understandings in that they invite
students to drill down within a unit of study to find details that help to
answer the question. A unit on the shift from state rule through the Articles
of Confederation to a central government with the Constitution asks the
essential question, “How do governments change?” Thought-provoking questions
help students make sense of complex concepts and create opportunities for
debate and discussion because they do not have a singular, concrete answer.
Importantly,
the use of essential questions also fosters the kinds of critical thinking and
problem-solving skills necessary for advanced learning. For example, Twyman,
McCleery, and Tindal (2006) measured the achievement levels of two groups of
eighth-grade social studies students. One group was taught a unit on colonial
U.S. history that emphasized factual knowledge, while the other was taught the
same unit conceptually through the analysis of problems of that period of
history. While both groups performed similarly on a factual knowledge
assessment, the conceptual group performed significantly better on measures of
vocabulary and essay writing.
2) Teach for transformation. The Twyman,
et al., (2006) study highlights another important practice: the need to
actively engage with the content in order to make it one’s own. Students need
opportunities to transform ideas in their minds and on paper (Fisher, Schell,
& Frey, 2004). Simply giving them information with the expectation that
they will absorb it and then regurgitate it is an outdated pedagogical notion.
However, when students wrestle with ideas, the information becomes a part of
their knowledge bank. Collaborative projects give students hands-on experiences
to synthesize information and create new understandings (Frey, Fisher, &
Everlove, 2009). For instance, when a group of students work together to create
blog entries chronicling the travels of Paul, a disciple of Jesus Christ, they
engage in research, clarify one another’s thinking, and write in the character
of this historical figure. When students learning about Jamestown and Roanoke
work in groups to scout a location for the settlements, they analyze maps,
consider the needs of the settlers, and factor in what little knowledge the
settlers would have had of the native people who lived there. In each example,
students transform the information though oral and written language, and
solidify their background knowledge to be used in subsequent lessons.
3) Assess background knowledge. Assessment
should occur before and during instruction, and not just in summative exercises
at the end of a unit. Regarding background knowledge, it is valuable to
determine what will be needed and assess the extent to which students possess
it. If and when gaps are noticed, the teacher can actively build it to
facilitate new learning. We think of background knowledge as falling into two
categories: incidental and core. Incidental knowledge may be interesting but
peripheral to the main concepts, while core knowledge is essential to
understanding the new concepts that will be taught (Fisher & Frey, 2009).
For example, knowing that the ancient Greek and Roman empires have influenced
Western democratic practices for two millennia is core background knowledge for
a unit on the American Revolution, but knowing about Greek mythology is
incidental for the same unit of study.
Once core background knowledge has been identified, it can be
assessed through the use of an anticipation guide (Tierney & Readance,
2004). Such guides are comprised of five to ten short written statements that
students respond to as true or false. For example, an anticipation guide for
the American Revolution unit might include items such as “The birth place of
democracy is Athens” (true), and “The Greeks were responsible for developing
the first republic” (false). Student responses to these and other statements
provide insight into whether they have sufficient background knowledge for the
new information they will be learning. An additional advantage of using
anticipation guides is that they activate background knowledge by signaling
what kinds of information the students will be using during the new unit of
study.
B.
FORMAL SCHEMA AND SECOND LANGUAGE READING
Orthographic
and phonemic knowledge
Learners learning a
second language are often already literate in their first language. To the
extent that this is true, they will have existing knowledge that the graphic
features they encounter on a page or screen are to be translated into language
with a meaning. Also, as noted in chapter 4, readers are sensitive to the rules
of their script or writing system whether that system is LOGOGRAPHIC ( Chinese
characteres, japanes kanji, korean hanzza ), syllabic ( japanese kana, korean
hangul ), or alphabetic ( arabic, english, hebrew, spanish ), with each
corresponding symbol representing a word, morphem, syllable, or phonological
segment.
Logographs ( logo =
word, graph = written sign ) primarily represent the meaning of words or
morphemes, only secondarily representing the sounds of the words. Phonetic
scripts, on the other hand, have the sounds and sound sequences of morphemes
and words as a basis. However, the logogram versus phonogram distinction is not
in fact a complete dichotomy of orthographic principles. Both chinese and
japanese have cases in which characters are primarily phonetic representationof
syllables or parts of syllables with little regard to any symbol – meaning
correspondence ( DeFrancis 1989 ; unger and DeFrancis 1995 ). Indeed, some
scholars prefer the term sinographic to logographic ( Birch 2002 ; Henderson
1982 ) because Chinese characters are not completely logographic in nature,
given the presence of written RADICAL in approximately 80 per cent of the
characters.
First language
ortographic features are similar those of the
second language will affect the ease with which they make the transition
into fluent second language reading. For example, although readers come from
languagethat uses the same alphabetic script as that of the target language,
the language will differ interms of the distribution of latters, general length
of the written words, amount and types of diacrical marks, allowable consonant
clustres, and frequencyof upper and lower case, ( ferreiro 2002 ), further,
even if the alphabetic system is somewhat different from the target language
script ( for examplefrom spanish to English or Greek to English ).
Sounds are arbitrarily
assigned to the graphic representation and are not directly drivable.
As second language
learners apply their existing first language content schemata to the reading
process, it appears that they may apply their first language orthographic
processing strategies when reading in a second language as well. The
pseudo-characters contained differing combinations of outer and inner radicals
associated with the pronuncation of the character. The results indicated that
subjects from the morphographic language background processed the
phonologically inaccessible and accessible symbols equally well while the
subjects from the phonological orthography backround perpormed better on the
phonologically inaccessible pseudo-characters than on the phonologically
inaccessible pseudo-characters.
Differences in knowledge
of how orthographic systems operate can affect the success of reading in a new
language. The formal schematic knowledge by native readers of english that
phonetic orthographies can contain grammatical elements such as tense markers
(-ed) and part of speech indicators (-tion) is useful strategic information.
Syntax
and language structure
Learner’s second
language reading proficiancy will need to include an examination of the
learner’s general syntactic, morphological, and lexical knowledge. The role
that syntactic knowledge plays in second language reading comprehension would
on the face of it appear to be pervasive. It appears self-evident that a second
language readers command of grammar is essential to comprehension of the text
mofication are based almost entirely on syntactic simplification of text. The
level of control will need to be both in terms of recognozing the salint
features and being able to process the syntactic system with some efficiency.
For example, look at the following sentence ( langacker 1972 : 157 )
Pama-lu tyulpin
wanta-re-ina
Pama = man
Lu = ergative case marking
Tyulpin =
tree
Wanta = fall
Ri = causative affix
Ina = future marker
Little comprehension of
this sentence will happen unless the learner undrestand the syntactic and
morphological features of Tyapukay, a language of Australia. The learner will
not undrestand that the sentence means ‘ the man will fell the tree ‘. The fact
that future aspect is indicated by an affix rather than a particle and that the
causative marker is also an affix are essential pieces of formal schemata that
are necessary for comprehension of the sentence.
One reason that
syntactic formal schemata are of interest to second language researchers is
reflected in accounts of how this knowledge affects the ease or difficulty of
texts that the second language readers may encounter. One type of alteration
involved the syntactic simplification of the text while the other involved
revision to increase the clarity, cohesion, and text structure. The version
modified for clarification, cohesion, and text structure produced greater gains
in comprehension than did modification along syntactic lines.
There are three
versions each of 18 short passages.
1.
The was comprised of
short simple sentence.
2.
The was made up of
complex sentence with clues to underlying relationships.
3.
Consisted of complex
sentence without the clues to underlying relationship
The role of syntactic
simplification was examined for readers whose native languages were English,
Dutch, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic, as well as a small number of other
languages, while they were reading English for science and technology texts. It
was found that there were no significant differences between the groups reading
the authentic or the simplified text either in terms of comprehension or
reading time. Nor were there differences between the computer science majors
and the humanities majors.
Leow ( 1993 ) examined
the effects of lexical and syntactic simplification, type of linguistic item (
present perfect versus present subjunctive ), and amount of language exposure,
as measured by numbers of semesters in a Spanish as a foreign language course.
Rather subjects who had been exposed to the present perfect and the present
subjunctive recognized more of the target forms than those who had not been
exposed to the forms. Yano, Long, and Ross found that both simplified and
elaborated text versions increased comprehension of short texts over unmodified
versions of the same text. The simplified and elaborated text generally
increased comprehension over unmodified text. Elaboration and simplification
improve comprehension about the same amount, though neither was statistically
significantly higher than the unmodified versions of the text for these
learners. The study indicated a possible interaction between syntax and
vocabulary on recall. However, the students with low syntactic knowledge were
not aided regardless of their vocabulary score. Likewise, high syntax scores
did not aid students with low vocabulary knowledge. Barnett’s conclusions are that vocabulary not be
stressed to the exclusion of syntax since syntax appears to play a significant
role in comprehension. For the syntax cloze items, the range of scores in each
level was :
Low : 10 -17
Medium : 18 – 24
High : 21 – 24.
For the vocabulary
items, the ranges of scores were :
Low : 10 – 15
Medium : 16 – 18
High : 19 – 24.
Text
structure
The previous section
has indicated some of the effects of cohesion on coherence and comprehension.
This section examines research that addresses the role that text structure
plays in reading. The term text structure refers to how the ideas in a text are
structured to convey a message to a reader (Carrell 1992). Clearly, some of the
ideas presented in a text are central to the message and others are less
central. Hence, text structure designates how concepts are related as well as
which concepts are related as well as which concepts are subordinated to others
(Meyer 1999). Research over the past three decades has shown that knowledge of
text structure interacts with comprehension. This research has generally
focused on the areas of narratives and expository prose, approaching the
internal structure of each genre in different ways.
Narrative
A great deal of the research on text
structure has examined the narrative.
Graesscr. Golding, and Long (1996)
note that narrative discourse has a special status in research and theories of
discourse, language use, and literacy in general. People acquire knowledge of story
structure prior to school while the structure of expository text requires
explicit instruction and training. Further, narratives are read more quickly
than expository text, and scores on recall and Comprehension tests are
generally higher for NARRATIVE text than for expository texts. The Conceptual
basis for narratives lies in sequence& of experiences and events that are
based in a culture. This grounding provides a source of background knowledge
for use in constructing meaning (Graesser et al. 1996).
Narratives represent experiences
based on events that are organized in knowledge structures that can be predicted
by the reader. Several narrative prose studies have looked at schematic textual
superstructures (Rumelhart 1975; Van Dijk and Kinrsch 1983). This research has
shown that narratives have a rather hierarchical structure that can be used by
readers to aid Comprehension. According to Mulcahy and Samuels (1987), these
narrative text structures help identify, define, and explore the goals of a
protagonist and reveal the problem solving strategies of story characters as
they attempt to reach a goal' (748).
Several 'story grammars' have been
proposed to account for the internal structure that ties the individual
sentences within a narrative together (Mandler 1984; Mandler and Johnson 1977;
Rumelhart 1975; Thorndyke 1977; Van Dijk and Kintsch 1983). A story grammar is
design to present the story components such as setting and episode. Hierarchical
relationships that are represented by the story schema. A reader familiar with
the narrative schema will look for these components in processing the text and
they will guide the reader. The story grammar attempts to describe what
elements of a narrative will be most salient to readers, and, by implication,
what will be most and least comprehensible.
Two groups of non-native English readers, all native speakers of Hebrew at Tel Aviv University. They examined these variables to determine whether the story grammar structural categories of setting, initiating event, internal response/goal, attempt, consequence, and ending would hold across language ability. They were particularly interested in whether the second language readers would corroborate landings from other story grammar studies of first language which indicated better recall of settings. Initiating events. And consequences (Stein and Glenn 1979). Further, they wanted to determine whether this order was violated in different stories. Two groups of non-native English subjects participated in the study. The first group, designated EFL, consisted of 20 intermediate an. students who had not completed the university& English requirements. The second group. Designated Fluent, had completed all English requirements as well as advanced study in English. Subjects were presented with four short texts between 86 and 104 words in length. Three versions of each passage were developed: the original story with normal ordering of events; a partially mixed order which had the consequence moved from fifth position to third position; and a fully randomized-order version in which the statements were never in their canonical order. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the versions of each story and asked to read the story for recall. The results of the study indicated that there was considerable variation across stories in the amount of recall for the different story grammar categories, but that there was much more regularity in the Fluent groups recall than in the recall by the BFI. Group. As was to be expected, the results showed that the recall order was more typical for the standard-order and partially mixed versions of the texts than with the fully mixed order. Further, the Fluent group had higher recall overall than did the EPL group. It thus appears that language proficiency does play a role in the processing of narratives. However, it is not clear whether this has to do with the initial reading of the text and recognizing it as a story, particularly with the fully mixed-order text, or with the structuring of the recall during its production. With the original standard-order text the language proficiency effect is less strong on the recall of the categories. For the partially mixed order, however, language proficiency played a greater role in differences of recall. This may implicate that unconventional text order qualitatively affects the lower-proficiency readers to a greater extent than it does the more able second language readers. Other studies have attempted to determine the extent to which knowledge of text structure, particularly narrative structure, affects Comprehension in languages other than English as measured by recall. Horiba, van den Brock, and Fletcher (1993) examined how recall of a narrative reflected attention to surface-level meaning-preserving features as opposed to top-down text-structure preserving features The study involved 47 Japanese 12th-grade students in Japan, and a control group of 72 American undergraduate students in the us. The students received four stories, two of which were fillers and not of interest in the recall component of the study. After reading all four stories, they were salted to write in their native language everything that they remembered about the texts. The recalls were then translated back into English and matched against the idea units in the original story. The recalls were scored for the extent to which they matched Verbatim or in a close paraphrase to the original text. Termed meaning preserving, or the extent to which they also preserved the structure of the original text even though some misunderstanding of the language may have occurred. Termed structure preserving. The results showed, not surprisingly, that the first language group had significantly higher recall in both categories than the second language group. Further, the results showed that second language readers had significantly higher recall of the structure-preserving features, thus showing that these readers did use their knowledge of text structure in their recall of the story. However, although the first language group showed sensitivity to the hierarchical level of the information according to the Johnson and Mandler (1980) approach to episode relationships. The second language group did not. This indicates more of a reliance on locally situated texts, such as lower-level causal relations, than on more global thematic organization of the entire text. This finding parallels the implications from Horiba (1993) previously discussed in the discussion of text cohesion in second language reading, lending support to the idea that the second language reader uses top-down knowledge about how a text is structured, Most of the studies on the relationship of narrative structure and second language Comprehension have been conducted 'with stories that have had fairly simple one- or two-episode structures. Riley (1993) examined the effects of story structure on a longer 85o-word folk tale in French containing eight episodes. She had three levels of English first language speakers studying French read one of the versions of the story. The levels were Level One (end of first year French), Level Two (end of second year French), and Level Three (students who had completed Courses beyond the fourth semester of French). The story was analyzed based on the story grammar of Johnson and Mandler (1980) and manipulated to form three versions: t) an 'ideal' story structure; z) a Flashback; and 3) a story grammar violation structure with interleaved episodes. (420). Thus, the reorganization of the second version created a story that began with a flashback, where no actual Violation of the story structure existed. The third story organization involved the reorganization of episodes, much as with Walters and Wolf (1986), moving episodes out of Chronological sequence and breaking up episodes. The subjects in the three ability levels were randomly assigned to one version of the text. They read the story and then retold the story in English. The protocols were scored for the number of nodes accurately recalled. The results showed that Level Three students scored significantly higher than the other two groups and that Level Two students scored significantly higher than Level One. They Further show that the canonical organized unmodified text produced significantly more recalled nodes than either of the other two text organizations, There were no significant difference: between story organization 2 and organization 3. Only the highest-level students recalled both the original version and the flashback organization significantly better than the story grammar violation The interaction of story organization and language level, thus, indicates differences between the three groups of subjects. Text structure had the biggest effect on the middle-level readers where the canonical structure was significantly more memorable than the other two organizations. Level One and Level Three, however, showed the least effect for text structure. Level One was at a very low-ability level and consequently the text. Regardless of text structure, was just too difficult. Text structure did not assist the subjects very much. However, for Level Three readers no significant differences’ existed between the original structure and the flashback structure, but differences were significant between the story grammar violating text and the other two. Thus, the higher-level readers could recognize the flashback version as a legitimate story organization, but were less able to piece together the text when the structure represented a Violation.
Riley also examined the extent to
which recall of the categories of setting, beginning, reaction. Attempt,
outcome, and ending were related to language level and story organization and found
significant effects for both story organization and language level, indicating
that these affected the types of nodes that were recalled. Further, there was a
significant interaction of category by language level and story organization by
language level. This indicated that the specific nature of the category
differences varied depending upon level and organization. Level Two and Level
Three had nearly parallel patterns of recall across the organizations, while
Level One learners showed little differentiation in story organization 3. The
randomized version. On organization t, Level Two and Level Three subjects
recalled settings and beginning best, followed by attempt. Level One, on the
other hand, recalled setting and reaction: better than the other categories.
This would seem to show that the lowest level of students is more affected by
low-level events. In general, settings and beginning; were recalled better than
the other nodes, while reaction: and ending were the least well recalled,
perhaps because of the relative low saliency given their positions.
Expository
text structure
Carrell (1984b) examined how use of
text structure applied to expository text.
Her research was designed to
determine whether there were any differences among non-native readers of
English in their interaction with English expository text representing
different rhetorical structures. She divided subjects into four language groups
(Spanish. Arabic, Oriental, and Other). Four passages relating to the topic of
loss of body water by athletes were developed into the rhetorical
structures of collection of description, causations,
problem/solution, and comparison. She collected immediate- and
delayed-recall data as well as answers to probe questions on the idea units
that were common to all four passages. Het results on the recall data show a
significant difference between immediate and delayed recall. Language group,
and discourse type. The results show a much better recall of the »tightly
organized structures than for the collection
of description passages, a finding consistent with the Meyer and Freedle
0984) findings for native English speakers. For all but the Arabic group, the
more tightly organized structures were recalled significantly better than the collection of description. The results
from the recall protocol organization show that those who recognized the
discourse structure and used that structure in their recall recalled more
information from the original text. This is consistent with the Hidings of
Meyer and her colleagues (Meyer. Brandt, and Bluth 1980; Meyer and Freedle
1984). However, unlike Meyer's work where approximately so per cent of the
subjects recognized and used the structure in their recall, only about 26 per
cent of the non-native English speakers used the original structure as they
recalled the text. It is difficult to interpret this finding directly,
primarily because there are no external measures to describe the proficiency
level of these particular experimental subjects. Consequently, it is not known
whether this low implementation of the input structural organization was clue
to the language proficiency level being insufficient for the readers to
recognize the input structure or because the non-native English speakers were
employing qualitatively different Strategies due to their own first language
background. Bendetto (1986) found that tenders who failed to attend to top
level text structure in their first language also failed to do so in their
second language, even when they were advanced second language users (For
example tenth-grade ability). More on this will be discussed later in the next
chapter when we look at findings from studies in contrastive rhetoric.
Tian
(1990) replicated Carrell's (1984b) study in Singapore with subjects whose home
language was Chinese, Malay, or Tamil. The results are similar to those of Carrell
in that the comparison text type was recalled well than the collection
&description; text type. However, there was little difference between collection of description, causations, and problem/solution text
structures. The findings that texts with
the comparison text structure were recalled better than those with the collection of description, and that
there was no superiority for problenr/solution, were also consistent with Meyer
and Freedle (1984), though Meyer and Freedle did find the causation structure
to be superior to collection of description. The findings by Tian may be closer to
Meyer and Freedle because the English language ability of the subjects from Singapore
was perhaps closer to those in Meyer and Freedle`s study than that for the
subjects in Carrell's study. Additionally, Tian found no effect for language
across the text types. The absence of an effect for language is most likely due
to the fact that all of the subjects had English-medium instruction and
primarily used their first language orally at home.
Instruction
in text structure
A natural question that emerges from
this research in first and second language reading and text-structure
relationships is whether it would be effective to reach these structures
explicitly in reading instruction. The previous review has indicated that there
is evidence for an effect of text structure on both first language and second
language reading comprehension in both narrative and expository texts, though
much of this effect is inferred from the relative performance between
processing a well-formed text and an ill-formed text. Several studies at different
levels of instruction have indicated that first language instruction in text
structure can be effective in teaching discourse organization.
Singer and Donlan (1981) provide evidence
that explicitly teaching 11th-grade students the structure as well as
strategies for applying the structure schema aided comprehension. In their
study, they taught students both schema knowledge of narrative structure for
assimilating content and a self-generation of content-specific questions for
engaging the text. Two groups of 15 students were assigned to one of two
groups. The first group received instruction in how to ask schema-general
questions about a story. These were questions concerning the main character,
the story goal. The conflicts that occurred. The outcome of the story, and the
story theme. This first group of students read half of a story and then
generated questions that they wanted answered. In the second group, the
students answered questions supplied by a teacher. Students were then given
criterion-referenced tests about the story. The group that received instruction
on structure schema and self-generated questioning over time showed a
significant advantage over the traditionally instructed group who worked with
supplied comprehension questions.
An important concern in the extent to which processing of text structure can be taught is whether there are particular approaches that are better than others, or whether the consciousness-raising activity itself is sufficient. To a large degree, a major consideration for interpreting the research tests with the amount and saliency of the types of instruction that have been presented to the subjects of the different studies. Slater, Graves, and Piché (1985) looked at the effect of four different types of instructional directions on recall and comprehension of high-, middle-, and low-ability ninth-grade students who were randomly assigned to one of the types of instruction. Basically in this approach, treatment was equated with the form of instructions that the subjects received as they carried out a task. The four different types of instruction varied in the extent to which guidance was provided for attending to text structure. The first two types of instruction were termed the structural organizer with outline grid (SOC) and the structural organizer alone (SON). The soc involved directions that: 1) described the benefits of using top-level structure as an aid for remembering information from a text; 2) defined the top-level structure of the target passage; 3) provided a sample passage top-level organization; and 4) included an outline grid of the top-level organization of the target passage for the subjects to fill in as they read. For the recall protocol, the subjects were instructed to write using the organization of the target passage. The SOA was identical to the SOG except that no outline grid was provided. The third condition, note taking (N O T E), involved directions that instructed the subjects to read the target Passage carefully and take detailed notes while reading. A brief note instructed them to write down everything they could remember for the recall test. The final condition, control (CON), involved instructions identical to the third condition except that the subjects were not instructed to take notes. The results indicated that the subjects in the SOG condition recalled the largest number of idea units (propositions) of all four conditions. Further. The NOTE condition was more effective than the sow and the CON, but the SOA was not more effective than the CON. Further, high-ability subjects scored significantly higher than the middle- and low-ability students, and the middle-ability subjects scored higher than the low-ability subjects, but there was no interaction of treatment by ability level. Here, the results indicate that the treatments that involved the most direct and productive involvement on the part of the learner, as well as providing the most guidance, were the most effective. However, given that the study provides only a one-shot exposure to the treatment and then analysis of the results from that treatment incident, it is not clear that the results indicate any type of generalizable learning by each subject, or are just a result of the particular type of instructions that the subjects get with each passage. In short. It is not clear whether this is an effective instructional technique or is simply an immediate governor on the subjects' performance.
Over a six-week instructional intervention, Berltowitz (1986) compared two experimental methods that focused on the textual organization of ideas with two study methods that did not focus on text organization. Three of the study methods are instructional methods while the fourth served as a control condition. In the map-construction (M-C) procedure, after reading the text students wrote the title of the article in the center of a sheet of paper. They then skimmed the text to determine the main ideas and these topics were written as headings around the title in a clockwise direction. The article was then skimmed again and important details were written under each of the main ideas that had been identified. Finally, boxes were drawn around each of the main idea categories and connected to the title box. Students then studied these completed maps focusing on the content and organization. The map-study (M-s) procedure provided the students with prepared maps of the texts after they read the passage. These were discussed in terms of the content and organization and the students were told to study them as with the M-C group. The question-answering (Q-A) procedure presented the students with 20 probe questions after they read the passages, and students went back to the text to check their answers to each question before actually writing an answer. Finally, the rereading (tut) procedure acted as a control condition in which the students reread the passage carefully and reflected on what they had read in a silent review/study procedure. Students then read three new passages and were tested for free recall and short-answer the treatment lasted for approximately six instructional sessions. The results showed that the M-C group performed better than the other groups on the tests of the passages. But only significantly on one of the passages read. A passage rated by experts as best suited for mapping. In further analysis, Berltowitz looked at the results for those students who were determined to have actually mastered the study procedure taught to the M-C and Q-A groups. The comparisons for those students who mastered each of the instructional techniques showed that the we group scored significantly better than the Q-A group on tests of recall. Thus, when the degree of expertise at learning the study technique is taken into account. There is evidence that map-construction is an effective technique across all of the passages. However. The caveat for both the M-C and Q-A procedures is that about 25 per cent of each group was unable to learn the technique. It is not clear whether those students did not learn the procedure because of insufficient exposure to the treatment. Or because the instructional methods themselves were not robust enough to. Be successful, or because the treatment was difficult to learn.
As part of a larger study. Meyer and Poon (zoot) looked at expository prose structure training for both older adults (69 years) and younger adults 21 years). The structure training explicitly taught learners to identify and use signaling devices such as headings. Preview and summary statements, and pointer words. In the text as an aid to encoding and organizing their recall. Subjects in the study were placed in structure-strategy training group (S-5), an interest-list group (1-1,), or a no-contact control group (NC). In the S-S group, nine hours of training involved direct instruction, modeling. And practice alone and in pairs. Participants learned to identify and use basic top-level structures to organize their ideas, and learned to recognize the structures in everyday reading materials. They were taught to use these structures as a framework for acquiring new information. Feedback was given individually to participants as they wrote or told partners the structure of texts that were read. In the l-L group the subjects were taught to evaluate systematically their interest in the text and use that information to monitor and increase their motivation to read by thinking of others who might End the article interesting. The N-C group received no training prior to reading a selection of texts. On total recall measures, the 5-8 group for both older and younger adults recalled significantly more idea units, and showed significantly greater gain from pre-test to post-test in idea units, than the I-L or N-C groups, while the last two groups did not significantly differ from one another. Additionally, participants from the S-S group recalled more main ideas and produced text summaries of better quality than either of the other two groups. And produced texts that used the organization of the original text better to structure their recall. Further. The 3-3 group training transferred to new task involving the processing of information presented via a video tape and reading of multiple texts that were more Complex and longer than those used in the training and initial testing. In summary, Meyer and Poon found that structure training can be successful with both young and older adults and that the resulting increase in content schema assisted in their reading.
In general, first language studies of training appear to support the effectiveness of direct text-structure instruction. Teaching students to be aware that 3 texts do have a reasonably predictable structure and to use it has been demonstrated to have a positive effect on comprehension. However, the studies just mentioned may actually have primarily taught the readers to be active readers. That is, the control groups typically had not had their attention called to good reading procedures while the experimental groups were provided with some instruction that focused the learners on the process.
Cartell (1985) noted that little empirical research had been reported as to whether teaching text structure facilitated second language reading comprehension, and she attempted to determine whether it was possible to facilitate ESL reading comprehension through training students in text structure. Her study included 25 university students from heterogeneous language backgrounds. Over five consecutive class periods the students in the experimental condition received explicit training in four of Meyer's expository structures: comparison, problem/solution, causation, and collection of descriptions. The control group received training in linguistic operations such as grammar, discourse connectors, cohesion. And vocabulary with the same texts. But no training in top-level text structure. The pre- and post-test procedures consisted of the students reading two passages, one comparison and the other collection of description. Writing an immediate recall. And identifying the overall organization of the text in an open-ended question. A delayed post-test was administered to the experimental group three weeks after the first post-test. The recall protocols were scored for the presence of each idea unit in the original text, and were analyzed to determine whether or not the recall used the text structure of the original text. Each idea unit in the original texts was coded according to Meyer (1975) as being an Introduction, Top-. High-. Or Low-Level idea unit. The results indicated that the text-structure training enabled the experimental group to recognize and use the discourse types. After training, the experimental group showed significant gain from the pre-test in the subjects who recognized and used the target text structure while the control group did not show such gain. Additionally, the delayed post-test showed that the subjects retained this gain three weeks after training. Further, the experimental group recalled significantly more of the High-. Mid- and Low-level idea units than did the control group. Thus, Carrell's work indicates that direct instruction of text structure can facilitate the reading recall of second language readers. Just as it was shown to facilitate comprehension by First language readers of English. Various text adjuncts have been examined for their electiveness in teaching text structure to second language readers. Lee and Riley (1990) presented no third-semester French language students with one of two reading passages, one a collection of description: organization and the other a problem/solution organization. The subjects were assigned to one of three conditions: I) no framework at all prior to reading the passage; 2) a minimal framework in which the subjects were told the type of passage organization (For example a collection of description or problem/solution); or 3) an expanded framework in which the subjects were given a more extensive presentation that provided context for a collection of description: or problem/solution. The results show that the subjects in the third group recalled a significantly greater number of idea units on the collection of description passage than the other two groups, and these last two groups did not differ from one another. There was no significant difference for the number of idea units recalled by the group with the problem/solution passage. However, when only the top-level idea units were examined, the expanded framework group produced significantly more for the problem/solution passage, but not for the collection of description passage. The conflicting results again indicate how the effectiveness of instruction is a complex association of interacting variables. In many ways, it is surprising that any significant results were found given the paucity of the Instruction that was provided.
Raymond (1993) examined whether French as a second language reading could be facilitated by instruction in organizational patterns of discourse. Based on the work of Meyer (1975). Raymond selected the following top- level text organizational structures for inclusion in her training: collection of description. Carnation, problem/solution, and comparison. Part of the training involved teaching signal words identified with the structures. Examples of the signal words are:
Collection: (grouping) and, in addition, also, include, moreover, first, second, at the same moment; (sequence) before, after, later, finally, last, etc.
Description: for example, which was one, this particular, for instance, specifically, such as, attributes of, namely. Properties of, characteristics are, etc.
Causation: as a result, because, since, for the purpose of, caused, led to, consequent. Thus, in order to, this is why, if/then, the reason, so, therefore, etc
Problem-solution: (problem) problem, question, perplexity. Puzzle, query, need, to prevent the trouble, (solution) solution, answer, response, etc.
Comparison: not everyone, but, in contrast, all but. Instead, act like, however, in comparison, on the one hand. On the other hand, whereas, unlike, etc.
Logographs (logo = word, graph = written sign) primarily represent the meaning of words or morphemes, only secondarily representing the sounds of the words. Phonetic scripts. On the other hand, have the sounds and sound sequences of morphemes and words as a basis. However, the logogram versus phonogram distinction is not in fact a complete dichotomy of orthographic principles. Both Chinese and Japanese have cases in which characters are primarily phonetic representations of syllables or parts of syllables with little regard to any symbol-meaning correspondence (DeFrancis 1989; Unger and DeFrancis 1995). Indeed, some scholars prefer the term sinographic to logographic (Birch 2002; Henderson 1982) because Chinese characters are not completely logographic in nature, given the presence of written RADICALS in approximately 80 per cent of the characters.
The extent to which learners’ first language orthographic features are similar are those of the second language will affect the ease with which they make the transition into fluent second language reading. For example, although readers come from a language that uses the same alphabetic script as that of the target language. The languages will differ in terms of the distribution of letters. General length of the written words, amount and types of diacritical marks, allowable consonant clusters, and frequency of upper and lower case, etc. (Ferreiro 2002). Further, even if the alphabetic system is somewhat different from the target language script (for example from Spanish to English or Greek to English), learning will be easier than if the learner is from a non-alphabetic script (for example from Chinese to English) or is moving from an alphabetic script to a logographic orthography (for example from Spanish to Chinese). For example, this sentence gradually becomes MORE Complex TO process at THE orthographic CHANGES from the familiar.
Given the differing orthographic units. Cognitive processes in reading may be seen to vary both in how the phonological code operates, and in contrasting strategies that may be used to access the phonological codes (Koda 1995). However, research has indicated that readers of logographic orthographies also use phonological encoding to access short-term memory in the reading process (Koda 3995). Strategies in phonemically represented languages vary according to the extent to which there is a clear consistent one-to-one correspondence of letter to sound. For instance, Spanish and Serbo-Croatian have much closer correspondences between letter and sound strings in each language than do English and French. With logographically represented languages, the phonological information is not clearly represented graphically. Though Chinese characters do contain some phonological information through radicals associated with single characters, as just noted. Sounds are arbitrarily assigned to the graphic representation and are not directly derivable (Koda 1995). Thus. Dialects of Chinese employ the same characters for words that have unintelligible pronunciations to speakers of different dialects. As a result. Decoding of such characters involves memory-search strategies as well as a certain amount of arbitrary sound assignment to unfamiliar symbols.
Just as second language learners apply their existing first language content schemata to the reading process; it appears that they may apply their first language orthographic processing strategies when reading in a second language as well. Mori (1998) examined how readers from morphographic (Chinese and Korean) and phonographic language backgrounds (English) processed novel Japanese pseudo-characters that were either phonologically opaque or phonologically accessible. The pseudo-characters contained differing combinations of outer and inner radicals associated with the pronunciation of the character. The subjects had completed approximately two hours of Japanese study at the college level. Subjects were shown the characters and then engaged in a memory task for the new characters. The results indicated that subjects from the morphographic language backgrounds processed the phonologically inaccessible and accessible symbols equally well while the subjects from the phonological orthography background performed better on the phonologically accessible pseudo-characters than on the phonologically inaccessible pseudo-characters. Thus, the two groups applied orthographic processing strategies that were consonant with those from their own first language. Their knowledge of how script is processed in their first language was applied to the unique characters in the target language. Native Chinese and English speakers learning to read Japanese attend to visual and phonological information differently. Chikamatsu (1996) showed that Chinese readers learning Japanese relied more on visual information in Japanese kana than did English readers, while the English readers attended to the phonological information in the Japanese kana more than the Chinese readers did. Word recognition differs between languages depending upon the language and characteristics of the writing system, and the ability to deal with the differences in the writing systems depends to a large extent upon reading proficiency in each of the languages (Chitiri et al. 1992).
Altamatsu (2003) examined the interaction of first language orthographic processing in second language reading of connected text. She was concerned that much of the research into second language orthographic processing has been done utilizing pseudo-words or non-words processed as single words without contextual clues. The study used case manipulation of letters in longer text. For example, one of her texts begins 'There is no absolute limit to the existence Of Any tree' (230). The subjects were native speakers of Farsi (alphabetic). Chinese (logographic), or Japanese (logographic and syllabic). The three groups did not differ significantly in their English reading ability based on TOEFL and Gray Oral Reading Test results. Each subject read case-alternating texts and normal texts at easy, moderate, and difficult text levels and answered comprehension questions. Reading Wilkinson, Elkins, and Bain (1995) found that lower-ability readers evidenced reduced sensitivity to story structure and generally recalled less information from story grammar categories. A primary criticism of story grammars is that they apply most reliably only to straightforward simple and relatively short stories (Graesser et al. 1996). When a story has shifting points of view or is complex in terms of the relationships between episodes, story grammar becomes less useful in explaining the hierarchy of the story. Thus, with stories that have unpredictable consequences that alter the plot, story grammars fail to capture the relationships between constituents. Likewise. Story grammars are structural in nature and do not explain the background knowledge needed to comprehend a story or reflect a representation of story motives such as revenge or desire. These deficiencies limit the explanatory value of story grammars.
Several other approaches to the explanation of how narrative texts are comprehended have been developed. There are causal network approaches (Trabasso and van den Broek 1985; van den Broek 1988). Conceptual graph structure approaches (Graesser I981; Graesser and Clark I985), srcipt and pian approaches (Shank and Abelson 1977), story point approaches (Wilcnslty 1982), plot point approaches (Lehnert 1981). setting-episode: approaches (Stein and Glenn 1979). And thematic affect approaches (Dyer I983) to name some. Each approach attempts to explain the ways that narratives are comprehended and stored. Each assumes that there is some essential set of structural and conceptual components that define a narrative and are used in its comprehension. Knowledge of the prototypic narrative structure assists the reader in comprehending and remembering elements of the story they have read.
Expository text
While narrative has a structure that is temporal and causal, the connections in EXPOSITORY texts tend to depend upon logical relations. Several different taxonomies of expository text types have been proposed. Meyer (1975) proposes antecendent/consequent, comparison or contrast, collection, description and response. Van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) propose text structure such as argument. Definition, classification, illustration, and procedural description. Calfee and Curley (1984) present taxonomy of exposition with levels of type specification: I) Description (definition, division and classification, comparison and contrast); 2) Illustration (analogy, example); 3) Sequence (process, cause and effect); 4) Argument and Persuasion (deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, persuasion); and 5) Functional (introduction, transition, conclusion). The complexity of categorizing expository text into clear and exclusive classes points out how the category divisions tend to be abstract example structures describing subcomponents within an overall text. The overall text is composed of different organizational units that are marshaled by the writer to accomplish the overall goal of presenting explanatory information in an organizational manner with which the reader is familiar.
Research into expository text has indicated for some time that there is a relationship, or relationships, between text structure and text processing. The two most commonly used text analysis systems, Meyer (1975, 1985) and Kintsch and van Dijk (1978), van Dijk and Kintsch (1983), have slight differences in how they view the text. The K.intsch and van Dijk approach employs the notion of propositions as the basic unit of meaning while Meyer's system uses the idea unit (Weaver and Kintsch 1996). Propositions are viewed as the smallest unit of text that can logically be proven False. Propositions consist of predicates and arguments, where predicates are typically the relationships between objects while arguments are the objects and concepts identified in the text (Kintseh, 1998; Kintsch and van Dijk 1978; van Dijk and Kintsch 1983). However, an idea unit expresses one action or event, and can generally be related to a single verb clause. Meyer (1985) notes that ‘unlike propositional analysis, our units do not give separate status to modifiers, conjunctions, connectives and the like' (71). It is not necessary to go into detail here about the differences between the two systems in order to discuss the relative importance of the text grammars in reading research. Meyer (1985) provides a detailed comparison and concludes that the Kintsch and van Dijk system is more efficient for scoring immediate-recall protocols while the Meyer approach is more advantageous in situations where less textually explicit accuracy is important, such as in delayed-recall contexts. However, although the sample size was very small in her study, Meyer (1985: 52) found a correlation of .96 between the two systems on recall scores. In short, both systems provide hierarchical descriptions of the ordering of the text propositions/idea units and base their predictions of how salient various parts of a text will be on the text organization.
Kinrsch (1998) sees propositional representations as being underlying representations related to underlying meaning more closely than sentences in a text. This is because, in his view, sentences are mapped on to the syntax of a language whereas propositions represent the most salient semantic relations. In short, he argues that propositions are the mental semantic processing units.
Further,
Meyer (1975, 1985) and van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) emphasize that there are
micro processes and macro processes involved in text comprehension. These
processes reflect the differential manner in which the reader processes micro
propositions and macro propositions. Interest in micro-propositions is
generally concerned with the interrelationships among the propositions and how
each new proposition relates to what has already been presented (Meyer and Rice
1984). As such, it focuses on the coherence issues discussed previously. Macro
processes are related to global comprehension of the text while micro processes have to do with close
comprehension of the text that proceeds phrase by phrase, clause by clause, and
sentence by sentence in a very bottom-up fashion, The two levels may not be
directly related.
Meyer (1975. 1977) examined how certain expository text types affect memory as they interact with content schemata and processing strategies. Meyer and Freedle (1984) argue that the higher a text is on a scale of internal organization. The more facilitative it is for comprehension. They argue that the order from least to most organized expository text types are: description, collection, mutation, comparison, and problem/solution. The five basic groups of textual structure differ in terms of the type and number of organizational components. Meyer and Freedle (1984) argue that the description relationship is the least organized while the problem/solution structure is the most organized. They argue that problem/solution has all of the organizational components of the causation relationships with the addition of overlapping propositions in both the problem segment and the solution segment.
In order to test their hypothesis, they conducted two studies on English first language graduate students listening to English passages. In the first study, they molt content related to the topic of dehydration and put the information in four versions of a listening passage, with each version representing a causal, problem/solution, comparison, or collection of descriptions organization. (They essentially collapsed the description and collection structures into one category.) In the second study, they examined the relative effects that the two organizations of comparison or collection of descriptions structure would have on recall of a listening passage. The results from the first study showed a significant advantage in proposition recall for causation and competitor: structures over the collection of description: structure. It is not clear why the problem/solution structure was not significantly higher than collection of description: on number of recalls. In the second study. Two groups of subjects listened to a passage about killer whales. Those subjects who listened to the comparison passage recalled a significantly higher number of text propositions than did those who listened to the collection of descriptions texts. Thus, both studies showed that discourse structure can affect comprehension and memory. An obvious issue here is to what extent this finding can be generalized to reading contexts, particularly second language reading contexts.
However, text structure does not act in isolation in the reading process. Berkmire (1985) examined the interrelationships among text structure, background knowledge, and purpose of reading, in effect looking at the interaction of content and formal schemata. Berkmire had physics and engineering college majors and music majors read three texts. One text was on the topic of a new laser annealing technique (laser text. a second text was about the history of musical notation (notation text). And a third passage was about parakeets as pets (parakeet text). The parakeet text was used as 3 control text. While the laser text was familiar to the physics majors and the notation text was familiar to the music majors. The subjects were either instructed to read for the main idea, or were given three questions to answer after reading. The reading passages were presented on a computer terminal one sentence at a time, and reading rate was monitored. After reading the text twice, the subjects were presented with six sentences measuring high-level, intermediate-level. Or low-level content structure, and were asked to identify which sentences had appeared in the text they had just read.
The results of the study showed that while reading the laser text, the physics majors read high content structure sentences at a faster rate than the intermediate or low content structure sentences. The music majors were slower overall with this text and did not read information high in the content structure at a rate that was different from the rate they read the low-level content structures. While reading the musical notation text. The two groups reversed these outcomes. The music group read the high content sentences faster than the intermediate or low content structure sentences. While the physics majors were slower overall and their reading rate did not distinguish between the high content structure and the low content structure. With the parakeet text, both majors read high content structure faster than intermediate or low content structure sentences, and each major read at approximately the same rate. The results show that sentences containing information located high in the content structure were read faster than sentences containing information lower in the content structure by those subjects whose background knowledge was related to the text topic. However, when the subjects did not have specialized knowledge of the topic. The text structure was either less helpful or not helpful at all. When reading the control parakeet text. Both groups read the high content sentences faster than the lower-level content sentences. This suggests that as an expository text becomes more specialized, the role of text structure may diminish with decreasing familiarity with the specialized topic. It further indicates that as information in a text ‘fits’ with existing knowledge it is easy to comprehend and is therefore processed more quickly. In the texts used in this study, the intermediate and low content structure sentences contained new information that required additional processing time.
The studies discussed here appear to show that, at least for first language readers. text structure can affect reading comprehension in several ways. First, the particular rhetorical structure may elicit particular strategies associated with that structure, as posited by van Dijk and Kintsch (1983). Second, the particular rhetorical structures vary in their case of processing. Third, super ordinate propositions that are higher in the text structure are recalled well than subordinate propositions lower in the text-structure representation. Groups of propositional units that are related to one another in the hierarchical structure are recalled more readily and more often than propositions that are weakly related to other propositions.
Text structure and second language reading
The previous discussion has examined research into the role of text structure in first language reading. However, it is important to examine how the issues play out in second language reading. A primary question revolves around: I) the knowledge of text-structure strategies by second language readers; 2) the relationship of first language text structures to second language text-structure processing; and 3) the effectiveness of text-structure instruction on second language reading comprehension. These areas of interest are not completely independent in that they overlap and interact with one another.
Narrative text structure
Several studies have looked at how narrative texts are processed by second language readers. Carrell (1984 :) examined whether a simple story schema influences ESL subjects as they read stories in English. Her subjects were each presented with three stories. The stories either followed a two-episode standard sequential order, or the same story with content from the two episodes interleaved in a non-conventional text pattern, analogous to the Mandler (1984. 1987) studies. Twenty-four hours after reading the stories, the subjects were asked to recall the stories as well as possible in writing. Carrell found that the subjects who read the standard-order texts recalled more story nodes than did the readers of the interleaved non-conventionally ordered stories. Further, there was a significant difference in the number of story nodes per episode that were recalled between the two groups. Those who read the standard order stories’ recalled more than did the readers of the interleaved stories. Additionally, many of the readers of the interleaved stories produced recalls rearranged into the standard order with the episodes ordered in the conventional sequential organization. Thus, the formal story schema tended to operate during the retrieval of the story information, a finding indicating that readers do rely on text-structure strategies for comprehension and retrieval of story information. This sensitivity to violations of narrative text structure by second language readers parallels the interference that first language readers had with the expository text-structure violations in Kimsch and Yarbrough (1982).
The role that second language proficiency plays is a major concern in terms of how it interacts with text-structure knowledge and use. Walters and Wolf (I986) examined language proficiency; text content and text structure with Story grammars have a number of commonalities in their features (Graeser, et al. 1996). Among these common features is that each has a set of rewrite rules that express component regularities. As an example, the following rules have been adapted from Mandler (1987) and Graessee et al. (1996).
1. Story Setting + Episode(s)
2. Setting description of the characters, time, location
3. Episode Beginning + Development + Ending
4. Beginning an event that initiates the Complex Reaction
5. Development Complex Reaction + Goal Path
6. Complex Reaction Simple Reaction + Goal
7.Simple Reaction an emotional or cognitive response
8. Goal a state that a character wants to achieve
9. Goal Path Attempt + Outcome
10. Attempt an intentional action or plan of a character
11. Outcome a consequence of the Attempt, specifying whether or not the goal is achieved
12. Ending a reaction.
Additionally, Beginning, Outcome, and Ending can serve as nodes that supply opportunities for additional episodes. Each episodes contains such components as the initiating event, the protagonist’s internal response, some attempt to reach a goal, a consequence of that attempt, and a reaction following from the protagonists attempts to reach the goal (Mulcahy and Samuels1987). the first rewrite rule above posits the primary constituents of a story as a setting plus one or more episodes. The second rewrite rule provides the substance of a setting. The third rule indicates that the constituents of an episode are Beginning, Development, and Ending. The remaining rules represent the types of information that can be assigned to the nodes when the text is interpreted. Graesser et al. (1996) show example text statements that may be attached to the different node categories:
Setting: Once upon a time there was a lovely princess who lived in a castle near a forest. Beginning: One day the princess was walking in the woods and she encountered a large ugly dragon.
Simple reaction: The princess was startled and frightened.
Goal: The princess wanted to escape from the dragon.
Attempt: When she started to run away.
Outcome: The dragon breathed fire in her path.
!
!
Ending: The princess was happy to be home again.
(Graeser et al. 1996: 180).
Thus, a story grammar assigns a hierarchical constituent structure when it is applied to a particular story. Each phrase, clause, and statement in a text is assigned to a particular node. Super ordinate information in the hierarchy is more important than any subordinate information. It would, thus, be expected that episode I would be more salient than episode 2 and episode 3. Further, it would be expected that episode 4 is less salient than episode 3. A test of the story grammar is whether readers reproduce a representation of these relationships in recall protocols. Together, according to Mandler (1984, 1987), these constituents represent a prototypic story schema that readers internalize. Studies have shown that subjects restructure stories to fit this canonical structure. Even when presented stories with interwoven episodes, subjects provide a story with distinct episodic structure when retelling the story (Mandler 1978; Mandler and DeForest 1979).
Mandler (1987) presented subjects with I2 different stories organized in three different ways. The first four stories consisted of a setting and two episodes temporally organized in such a way that one episode ended and another unrelated episode began. The second four stories consisted of a setting and two episodes, but the second episode was contingent upon the outcome of the first episode. The last four stories, with the most complex organization, consisted of a setting and two episodes with the second episode embedded in the first episode. For the first two structures, subjects overwhelmingly organized the sentences of the story into the canonical story structure. There was less agreement on the third type of organization. In general, the data from the study indicate a hierarchical structure in the relationship between episodes as well as between setting and episode.
There are indications that although the underlying hierarchical narrative story structure is recognized by most first language readers from about the third grade on, schematic knowledge of narrative structure is reflective of overall reading ability. Fitzgerald (1984) systematically presented I66 fourth and sixth graders with components of a narrative with different parts of the Mandler and Johnson (1977) story grammar visibly missing. The narratives could be missing the story grammar component of Setting, Beginning, Reaction, Attempt, or Outcome. As they read, the readers were asked to predict orally what should or could come in the incomplete section of the story. For the most part, there was a strong tendency for the readers to predict the correct category for the deleted text. This indicates that the raiders maintained a general sense of the narrative structure. Further, there was a tendency for the better readers to expect the appropriate categories more often than the poorer readers, and to predict more accurately. Two subsequent studies (Hinchlcy and Levy 1988; Rahman and Bisanz 1986) confirmed the findings that although all of the readers were sensitive to some degree to the canonical story schema, better readers were more able to use the structure and more capable of dealing with non-standard narrative presentations. Finally,
BAB III
CLOSED
A.
CONCLUTION
A
great deal of evidence that indicates a relationship between content schema and
reading comprehension. The topic of a text is essential for readers in either
first language and second language to understand, or even approximate, a
writer’s message. Subjects of many different ages, backgrounds, levels of ability,
first language, as well as those who are ESL versus those who are EFL versus
those taking modern language classes such as university Spanish or French
classes. Consideration of background knowledge cannot be ignored when attempting to understand second language
reading comprehension. These readers appear to engage almost exclusively in
text based processing rather than applying background knowledge in the
comprehension process. The study of second language reading have found that
readers often rely too heavily on top-down background knowledge processes that
cause interference. Carrell notes that one reason for over-reliance on the text
is an absence of the appropriate knowledge structures for top-down processing.
B.
REFERENCES
Ø Anderson,
R.C., & Pearson, P.D. (1984). ‘A Schema-Theoretic View of Basic Processes
in Reading Comprehension.’ In P.D. Pearson, R. Barr, M.L. Kamil, & P.
Mosenthal (Eds.). The Handbook of Reading Research (pp. 255-292). New York:
Longman.
Ø Carrell,
P. L. (1984). The effects of Rhetorical Organization on ESL Readers. TESOL
Quarterly, 18.
Ø Carrell,
P.L. and Eisterhold, J.C. (1983) "Schema Theory and ESL Reading
Pedagogy", in Carrell, P.L., Devine, J.
Ø Eskey,
D.E. (1988) "Holding in the Bottom: an Interactive Approach to the Language
Problems of Second Language.
Ø Goodman,
K. S. (1967). Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game. Journal of Reading
Specialist, (4).
Ø Grabe, W.
(1988) "Reassessing the Term 'Interactive'", in Carrell, P.L.,
Devine, J. and Eskey, D.E. (eds.).
Ø Smith,f.
(2004). Understanding Reading. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates,Inc.
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