Helping ESL Students Become Better Readers: Schema Theory Applications and Limitations
Some of the applications of schema theory to the teaching of reading are summarised next.
Applications of Schema Theory to ESL Reading
As described in the previous section, "some students' apparent reading problems may be problems of insufficient background knowledge" (Carrell 1988b:245). Where this is thought to be topic-related, it has been suggested that 'narrow reading' within the student's area of knowledge or interest may improve the situation (see Carrell and Eisterhold 1983:86). Similarly, where schema deficiencies are culture-specific, it could be useful to provide local texts or texts which are developed from the readers' own experiences (op.cit.:85).
On the other hand, Carrell and Eisterhold (1983:89) also suggest that "every culture-specific interference problem dealt with in the classroom presents an opportunity to build new culture-specific schemata that will be available to the EFL/ESL student outside the classroom." Thus, rather than attempting to neutralise texts, it would seem more suitable to prepare students by "helping them build background knowledge on the topic prior to reading, through appropriate prereading activities" (Carrell 1988b:245).
Carrell (1988b:245) lists numerous ways in which relevant schemata may be constructed,including lectures, visual aids, demonstrations, real-life experiences, discussion, role-play, text previewing, introduction and discussion of key vocabulary, and key-word/key-concept association activities. Examples of such contextualisation include,
for example, showing pictures of a city before asking the students to read a text about that city, or playing a video clip from a film adaptation of the novel the class is about to study. Although helpful, these prereading activities are probably not sufficient alone and teachers will need to supply additional information.
Reading problems are not just caused by schema deficiencies, and the "relevant schemata must be activated" (Carrell 1988a:105). In other words, readers may come to a text with prior knowledge but their schemata are not necessarily activated while reading so "prereading activities must accomplish both goals: building new background knowledge as well as activating existing background knowledge" (Carrell 1988b:248). Particularly useful and popular here are questioning and 'brainstorming', where learners generate information on the topic based on their own experience and knowledge (Aebersold and Field 1997: 71). For example:
Example One
You are going to read a passage about a woman's encounter with a bear while hiking in an American national park.
Before reading, answer the following questions:
(a) Do bears live in the wild in your country? What kind of bears?
(b) How would you feel if you met a bear while hiking?
(c) What do you think we should do if we encounter a bear in the wild?
Previewing the text (particularly the title, subheadings and figures) also "helps readers predict what they are going to read" and this, hopefully, activates their schemata (Aebersold and Field 1997:73). For example:
Example Two
You are going to read a passage about a man's bad experience on a camping trip in the north of England.
Before reading, do the following exercises:
(a) Write down five problems the man could have had when he was camping.
(b) Look at the title of the passage and the list of words. What do you think might have happened?
TITLE: 'Our Terrible New Year'
WORDS (in order): holiday, happy, drove, far, camped, beautiful, night, freezing, snow, morning, engine trouble, help, no phone, ran, ice, slipped, cut, disaster
Another relevant point is that, because lower level students may have the schemata but not the linguistic skills to discuss them in the L2, the first language could be used to access prior knowledge but teachers must introduce the relevant vocabulary during the discussion, otherwise a "schema has been activated but learning the L2 has not been facilitated" (Aebersold and Field 1997:77).
Although prereading activities, such as those above, are potentially beneficial, there is evidence that their usefulness is limited. This is discussed in more detail below.
Limitations in the Use of Schema Theory in ESL Teaching
Problems with Schema Theory Applications
Despite the current popularity of prereading activities, there may be limits to their use in ESL teaching and they may not always function as intended. Carrell & Wallace (in Carrell 1988a:105-6) found that giving context did not improve recall even for advanced ESL readers suggesting that their schemata were not activated. Hudson (1982:186) claims that, by encouraging students to use the good reader strategy of "touching as few bases as necessary," they may "apply meaning to a text regardless of the degree to which they successfully utilize syntactic, semantic or discourse constraints."
The reading process has famously been described as a "psycholinguistic guessing game" (Goodman in Carrell and Eisterhold 1983:74) in which "efficient readers minimize dependence on visual detail" by utilising background knowledge to make predictions and checking these against the text (Goodman 1975:12). Such top-down models have unfortunately given the misleading message to teachers that ESL reading tuition is "mostly just a matter of providing [learners] with the right background knowledge... and encouraging them to make full use of that knowledge in decoding... texts" (Eskey 1988:97). It is now recognised that "language is a major problem in second language reading" (op.cit.:97).
ESL readers need "a massive receptive vocabulary that is rapidly, accurately and automatically accessed" (Grabe 1988:63). Carrell (1988b:244) suggests a "paralle
《Helping ESL Students Become Better Readers: Schema Theory Applications and Limitations》
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