Some issues in studying the role of schemata, or background knowledge, in second language comprehension

Abstract

Several recent studies have examined the effects of schemata, or background knowledge, in second language comprehension, specifically ESL reading comprehension. The research has been based on earlier research into the role of schemata in first language comprehension. In some cases, this forst language research has been cross-cultural in the sense of studying the effects of different origins on the subjects who read or heard them in their native language. In this first language research, both the corss-cultural as well as the remainder, a theoretical distinction is often drawn between "content" schemata (background knowledge of the content area of the text) and "formal" schemata (background knowledge of the rhetorical structures of different types of text). This paper raises and discusses two unresolved issues found in both the first language and the second language-ESL research. Those issues are: 1) the extent to which the previous research has either manintained or confounded the theoretical distinction between "content" and "formal" schemata, and the general nature of the relationship and interaction of these two types of schemata in naturally occuring texts; and 2) the extent to which the effects measured by the cross-cultural research are related to more general situations of the presence or absence of appropriate background knowledge which may not be culture-specific.