How Students' Schemata are Activated and Built Up in Reading Activities

来源 :中国教师与教育教学研究 | 被引量 : 0次 | 上传用户:maygrass
下载到本地 , 更方便阅读
声明 : 本文档内容版权归属内容提供方 , 如果您对本文有版权争议 , 可与客服联系进行内容授权或下架
论文部分内容阅读
  【摘 要】图式是过去经验的反应,是一个活跃的发展着的模型,它是一个逐渐积累的知识结构。本文从语言图式,内容图式,形式图式,策略图式四个角度阐述了如何在学生的阅读活动中创建和激活图式,形成学生固有的经验和知识结构以帮助提高英语阅读效率、技巧等。
  【关键词】图式;阅读活动;激发;创建  According to the interactive model of reading based on schema theory, reading comprehension has an interactive function, which is that readers activate the appropriate linguistic, formal, content, and strategy schemata in the process of interacting with a text. Teachers should make full use of schemata to improve students' reading comprehension. For this purpose, this article is designed to discuss how to build up and activate schemata by activities. In reading class, many reading activities are held to keep the students from feeling tedious and make reading effectively.
  Many teachers have realized the importance of applying the schema theory. The teachers pay more attention to the students' psychological and physiological characteristics, collect the feedback information from the students and learn modem psychological schemata systematically to help the students improve their reading abilities, and develop the students' reading strategies consciously and constantly. Based on her own experience, the author draws a conclusion that the reading activities should be based on the four schemata, linguistic schema, content schema, formal schema and strategy schema. In the following part, we would present how students' schemata were built up and activated from four aspects.
   1. The Development of Students' Vocabulary
  Linguistic schema, including vocabulary, grammar, common usage of language, is the precondition of reading. And students' reading ability is determined to a great extent by vocabulary. For many students' language learning, vocabulary is an inevitable obstacle and plays an important role in reading comprehension. It has to be paid great attention to, especially at the elementary stage of learning. For readers of little vocabulary, any reading strategy or skill would be of no effect. Many foreign language learners cite "lack of adequate vocabulary as one of the obstacles to text comprehension" (Levine and Reves,1990).To senior middle school students, especially in ordinary schools, lack of abundant vocabulary is still a great obstacle in reading. English words can be turned into a reader's sight words after being numerously contacted by the reader. The sight words can be compared to nodes of a net, and they help invoke other words or schemata and form semantic mapping because they have such function as node words, which finally lead to the comprehension of the information of the article. The sight words that form schema network can be recognized automatically in reading. So we should turn as many words into sight words as possible.   According to Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve (Gui Sicun, 2003:8), the forgetting processing is not linear. It is very easy to forget a newly contacted thing in 20 minutes. That means if a newly contacted word is not soon reinforced by another meeting, that learning will be lost. So revision and consolidation should be in time. Without timely revision, the learned knowledge will be overlapped by new things piece by piece and can't be retrieved at last. As to English words learning, the rate of repeating is very important. If a new word appears in different contexts for several times in a certain time, the new words will be remembered steadily. Therefore, a good way to enlarge vocabulary is to do more reading. But different passages and different topics make it difficult for the same new words to reappear in a short time. Then we can adopt English-Chinese comparison words list, which is made by the teacher. The teacher reads the reading texts carefully, combining her experience with the students' situation, and then makes the word list of the important new words, phrases, sentences. Not long after the reading, the teacher shows the Chinese of the words list and asks the students to say the English. This activity repeats a few times after reading. It helps the students recall the words they have contacted with. By thinking of the newly learned words, the students can recall the context of the passage before they forget it totally, which contributes to learning new words in context. The students remember the new words by activating their schema and build up new schema while learning new words
   Another activity which forms semantic mapping is called "brain storming". This may be operated as follows. After they are given a particular key word or key concept, students are then invited to call out words and concepts associated with the keyword or words provided by the teacher. Any idea is acceptable and it is added to the framework. The semantic map is formed by many branches growing from the node word. The teachers can choose different node word from different branches each time to make new touching. To make the students enjoy the reading process, teachers can also train the students to guess words in context. Some psychological studies show that reading is a kind of complicated "psychological guessing game" Every time the guessing is confirmed, the readers enjoy this successful psychological result. Joan Rubin says "the good language learner is a willing and accurate guesser". A good guesser uses all the clues that the setting offers him and thus is able to narrow down what the meaning and the intent of the communication might be. Conciously or unconsciously, guessing words in context is considered to be a very common vocabulary acquisition skill and activity. Clark and Nation (cited from Nation, 1990) suggest five specific steps that could be included during explicit instruction of this strategy.    Step 1. Look at the unknown word and decide its part of speech.
   Step 2. Look at the clause or sentence containing the unknown word.
   Step 3. Look at the relationship between the clause or sentence containing the unknown word and other sentences or paragraphs.
   Step 4. Use the knowledge you have gained from steps 1-3 to guess the meaning of the word
   Step 5. Check if your guess is correct
   2. The Accumulation of Cultural Knowledge in EFL Reading Classes
   One of the most obvious reasons why a particular content schema may fail to appear for a reader is that the schema is culturally specific and is not part of a particular reader's cultural background (Carrell and Eisterhold, 1983). It means one of reading obstacles is caused by lack of culture-specific background knowledge. Thus, in a reading class, it is necessary to provide students with cultural knowledge that may be missing from their schemata. Besides offering lectures on the western cultural difference from that of China, teachers can use the following practical and easy-to-operate activities of teaching culture in EFL classes.
   Cultural comparison is an effective activity which leads to analysis of different culture, different value outlooks and different merit standards. When the students are comparing the related cultures and other things, they get deeper understanding and impression on the cultures of the target language.
   In reading class, the teachers can conduct relevant cultural information finding. It is proved that this is a good way to input cultural knowledge. Usually the activity is instructed in the following way. The teacher shows the assigned topic relevant with in-class reading, then the students are asked to find certain culture information after class in any way including going to library or surfing the Internet. The students come back to class and present what they have found to class. Most of the students take active part in learning and presenting the culture knowledge. For example, in teaching the article The Spirit of Christmas, the teacher can ask the students to find information in advance about other countries' national festivals, including some festivals in China, what the people do and what is the inner meaning of the festivals. In the following class, students can present and exchange their findings, and then see who finds the most information about festivals. This activity is better than direct explanation of festivals by the teacher.    Games like role-play can simulate a real culture situation which helps the students have similar and exciting experience. They will be impressed with specific English culture to a great extent. Also teachers can invite some native English speakers to give a talk or communicate with students in English, which is more attractive. If the students are interested and would like to have more chances, they can make friends and chat with foreigners on line, which of course, should be instructed by teachers and parents.
  Another way is to introduce some foreign novels or movies to students. These materials are authentic both in language and culture, which can provide students with real language and cultural information. Besides, the use of popular culture especially applies to young students since they are more exposed to and easily accept popular culture than any other age groups.To sum up, the activities described above contribute to the accumulation of students' cultural knowledge and reconstruct their prior schemata, which will eventually improve their ability of comprehending English articles.
   3. The Awareness of Different Rhetorical Structures
   As we know, there are different types of texts of different formal schemata, so "one of the important parts of reading is the recognition of text genres and distinct text types which are deliberately exploited by writers" (Kathleen, 1998: 191). Many researchers prove that text organization can be made good use of by students after certain training.
  Generally speaking, the selected passages are mainly the following types: narratives, expository writings, application writings and treatises. Different types of passages should be dealt with in different ways. The first important thing for readers is to judge and distinguish the types of writing. For narratives, there are three basic elements, namely time, place and people. Usually stories and incidents occur according to these three elements, according to which the questions after reading are usually designed. So finding out the three elements is the key. Expository is a kind of article which explains to the readers the appearance, functions and characteristics about something. We can always find the topic in the first paragraph. Then in the following paragraph, its characteristics or different aspects will be presented respectively. If the readers are to understand the article quickly, the key is to grasp the topic sentence of each paragraph. As to treatises, it is a kind of article which expresses the view point of the author about a matter or a thing. To understand treatises the readers should try to find out how they are structured and arranged. The author always has his way to prove his view point by giving examples, discoursing or quoting a lot of remarks of experts. So the key is to search for where the writer put his view point and what's its reasoning structure. The last type of writing, such as notices, ads and diagrams is the most culture specific. The writing is known as applying writing genres which often make the students feel puzzled. It is difficult for Chinese students to deal with these writings because of the lack of real situations in daily life.   It is important to give some introduction to the rhetorical structure of the text before reading. And then in EFL reading classes, one of the most useful activities to build up schema is comparison. There are some obvious differences in rhetorical structures between English texts and Chinese texts. The students can remove some reading obstacles after mastering them. We can take some Chinese argumentative essays as an example. This writing style emphasizes a spiraling structure, which includes four parts in one article: opening, continuing, transition and conclusion. If we make some comparison, we can find the western argumentative essays are much more direct. They always present the theme in the first sentence and develop the plot along a straight line. In conclusion, to help the students with their reading comprehension, the teachers should make sure the students have a good knowledge of rhetorical methods, types and structure. In the textbook (SEFC) of high schools, there are various genres such as story, novel, biography and so on.
   Second, the introduction of "discourse markers" is of great help to readers. Certain words or phrases and their locations within the discourse will activate a set of assumptions. Most of them can indicate the relationship between different expressions. These words can also be described as "cohesive devices". They are useful to help the students to work out the meaning of a difficult text. These discourse markers used in texts of SEFC can be summarized as follows:
   Addictive: moreover, furthermore, what's more, likewise, etc.
  Cause and effect: as a result, accordingly, as a consequence, therefore, thus, cause, for this
  reason, because, etc.
   Adversative: yet, though, however, nevertheless, as a matter of fact, anyhow, etc.
  Sequencing: first, second, finally, then, as soon as, the following day, etc.
   The teacher should assign some reciting of these discourse markers. And the best way to master these word is applying them in writing, so the teacher should give the students certain assignment.
  4. Building Up the Strategy Schema
   Strategy schema is a kind of supervising behavior in the process of reading comprehension conducted by the brain. It refers to predicting, judging problems, making decisions, reading skills, remembering skills, reading speed, etc. Teachers should help students form awareness of using reading strategies and building up their new schema. To our pleasure, many students themselves have realized this. They want to have a good knowledge of using proper reading strategies in reading comprehension, such as discussing, predicting, summarizing, focusing the discourse markers and key sentences to help comprehending.   A good reader needs not only to simply accumulate reading experience, but consciously adopt reading strategies. First some misunderstanding or wrong belief should be swept off from the students. Some students tend to believe that "Unless I understand everything, I won't understand anything" and they expected "total comprehension" of the text. They rely on the dictionary to consult every new word that hinders their understanding. In fact, even native speakers do not impose a standard of total comprehension on themselves; and they tolerate certain vagueness. In using authentic materials, we have to tolerate vagueness in the process of learning. Therefore, it is necessary to encourage the students to make the most of their incomplete comprehension and use every clue for active guessing in newspaper reading. Second, the teacher should help the students form good reading habits. At the beginning, when reading, most of the students in the experimental class just took in information word by word and moved their eyes back to check the previous information instead of reading steadily forward, and others preferred to point to the sentences word by word with finger .They were not willing to leave out even a single word and wanted to have a clear idea about the structure of every sentence in the process of reading. As a result, their reading went on in interactive - compensatory processing and their comprehension remained at the sentence level and literal comprehension. The students need form good habits from training. Third, the teacher guided the students to make prediction by reading the headlines of the news. Skimming and scanning were all introduced to the students by the researcher. As is known, skimming is a skill of reading quickly by skipping details. It can be used by reading the first and last sentences of each paragraph. Scanning is a useful skill to help the students find key information quickly.
   In short, we can draw a conclusion that teachers themselves should learn modem psychological schemata systematically, which enables the teachers design and prepare more schema-oriented activities for effective and efficient reading teaching. Furthermore the teachers ought to pay more attention to the students' psychological and physiological characteristics, collect the feedback information from the students to improve the reading activities after getting experience from teaching. Also the function of each kind of schema should be made clear to the students. After the students manage out what they lack and what is in need, they will consciously build up new schema and activate prior schema in reading activities. All these are beneficial for the improvement of the students' reading ability. Thus the students' reading strategies and abilities can be developed consciously and constantly.
  【参考文献】
  [1] Levine, A., & T. Reves. (1990). Does the Method of Vocabulary Presentation Make a Difference? TESL Canada Journal, 8: 37-51.
  [2] Carrell, P. L. & Joan C. Eisterhold.(1983). Schema Theory and ESL Reading Pedagogy. In P.L
  [3] Nation, I. S. P. (1990). Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. New York: Newbury House.
  [4] S. Kathleen. (1998). Reading. Schema Theory and Second Language Learners. Tokyo: Eichosha Shinsha Co, Itd.
  [5] 桂诗春,(2003),记忆和英语学习 [J],外语界,第3期:7-8页。
  [6] 林挺,(1996),应用图式理论提高阅读效果 [J],现代外语,第4期 30 页。
  [7] 齐齐,李陆平,(1999),图式理论与英语阅读前教学活动[J],首都师范大学学报1999年增刊。
  [8] 王继坤,(1999),《现代阅读学教程》[M],青岛:青岛海洋大学出版社23页。
  [9] 张华,苏理华(2004), 图式理论对英语阅读教学的启示[J], 成都教育学院学报 第6期 22页。
其他文献
【摘 要】亲情、友情、爱情作为人类永恒的话题,无一不让人们用生动的语言来反复地表现与吟诵,在这些感情中,有一种让人感到最真切、最纯洁、最朴实的情感,那就是幼儿教师与孩子们之间的情感——师幼情感。  【关键词】亲情;友情;爱情  高尔基说过:“谁不爱孩子,孩子就不爱他,只有爱孩子的人,才能教育孩子”。亲情、友情、爱情作为人类永恒的话题,无一不让人们用生动的语言来反复地表现与吟诵,在这些感情中,有一种
期刊
【摘 要】中学青年教师是教育和教学改革的中坚力量,是学校发展的希望。所以培养中学青年教师加速成长是是一项重要的课题。本文从促进知识结构的多层复合;开展校本培训;加强青年教师的创新意识和科研能力三方面来论述中学青年教师的专业成长途径。  【关键词】中学青年教师;专业成长  专业成长是教师的安身立命之本,一刻都不能放松。在我国现阶段的中学教师队伍中,青年教师是教育和教学改革的主要力量,是学校未来发展的
期刊
在地理教学中,地图的作用至关重要,学生对地图的掌握情况,直接关系到地理教学的效果。在教学过程中,教师要注意培养学生的读图能力和绘图能力,它不仅能够增强学生的空间概念和空间想象力,还能激发学生学习地里的兴趣,加深学生对地里知识的理解和记忆。具体做法如下:  1. 让学生看懂地图是学好地理的关键  从初一开始,就要把地图放在首要位置。首先要教会学生如何使用地图,掌握阅读地图的“三部曲”。其次,在教学中
期刊
【摘要】新课程理念重在强调初中生化学能力的培养和训练,针对学生对化学课的学习现状,本文主要探讨了如何从激发学生的学习兴趣和培养学生的综合能力两方面来培养和训练初中生的化学能力。  【关键词】初中生;化学;能力培养  The junior high school bio-chemical learn ability of development and train  Huang hai-chang 
期刊
汉语拼音是认读汉字字音,学习普通话的工具,是低年级语文教学的一项重要任务,但是,汉语拼音又是比较枯燥的符号,《语文课程标准》针对以往教材拼音教学繁、难、偏、旧的现象,学生学习起来难度较大的现状,摒弃了一些陈旧、过时的认识和做法,对汉语拼音教学进行了改革,提出了新的要求:能读准声母、韵母、声调和整体认读音节;能准确拼读音节,正确书写声母、韵母和音节。将学习目标定位在拼读音节,立足于用,只把汉语拼音作
期刊
合作学习作为一种新型的学习方式被老师们广泛采用。可是,一些教师由于对合作学习精神实质把握不正确,意义理解不深刻,在实践中偏离合作学习的初衷,没有取得理想效果,因此,存在一些有待进一步研究和改进的问题。  1. 小学语文课堂教学中小组合作学习存在的问题。  1.1 只为合作,流于形式  为了营造“小组合作学习”的氛围。教师打乱原有的座位秩序,将学生分成4人或6人一小组编排座位。一有问题,学生按照教师
期刊
【摘 要】城乡结合部的学生难教是每位教师的心声,这主要决定于他们自身的特点,笔者主要从培养学生良好的学习习惯,注重基础知识与基本技能的教学,以表扬为基础,关心和爱护学生,采用探究式教学方式,紧密联系生活实践等五个方面,就如何针对城乡结合部初中学生数学课堂开展有效的教学的一些做法写出来与大家共勉。  【关键词】城乡结合部;初中;数学;有效性  随着我国城市化和工业化进程的加快,城市周边的农村得到了很
期刊
1.教学过程交际化为每一个学生创造听说英语的机会教学是师生双方交流思想、情感和信息的过程,英语教学应努力使课堂教学交际化,将传统的教师讲、学生听的单向交流变为师生之间的互动交际。学生在交流信息的过程中既学到了英语知识,又培养了交际能力。   1.1坚持让学生用英语做值日生汇报   为了训练培养学生在公开场合运用英语的能力,笔者每天利用课前5分钟,轮流让两位学生用英语做值日生报告。初
期刊
【摘 要】通过英语学困生英语基础,家庭背景,英语学习兴趣及学习心理的调查研究,发现该类学生大多所处的家庭文化背景差,缺少良好的学习氛围;学生英语成绩差主要是非智力因素所致,例如学习兴趣,学习态度等。通过成功体验和适时表扬等策略的探究和实施,做到因人施教,与学困生建立起和谐合作的师生关系,激发他们的学习兴趣和热情,调动他们学习的主动性和积极性,引导他们喜欢学习,学会学习,帮助他们克服心理障碍,重新树
期刊
班主任是学校班级工作的领导者、组织者和管理者。通过班主任对全体学生进行一系列全面、深入、细致和具体的教育,使每个学生在德、智、体、美、劳各个方面得到全面发展,成为社会主义的建设者和接班人。班主任对学生的教育在学生的成长阶段起到重要作用。在二十多年的教学生涯中,使我深深体会到,班主任是一项艰巨、繁琐而又富有思想性、科学性、艺术性和创造性的工作,对学生的教育必须符合一定的教育规律。结合我当班主任的工作
期刊