THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURAL SCHEMATA ON CRITICAL READING COMPREHENSION AND PROCESSING STRATEGIES
Amporn Sa-ngiamwibool
amporn_kai @ yahoo.com
Abstract
According to schemata theory, cultural schemata are the major factors that influence reading comprehension as well as reading strategies in general. But whether they influence critical reading is still debatable. The main purpose of this study is therefore to examine how cultural schemata influence adult readers’ critical reading comprehension and their processing strategies, with three specific purposes: (1) to examine the influence of cultural schemata on Thai students’ critical reading comprehension, (2) to examine the influence of cultural schemataon the readers’ critical reading strategies, and (3) to explore the relationship between the strategies they used and the reasons they gave. 60 proficient readers - 30 from English for Communication who lacked prior knowledge of the text and 30 from Business Administration who had prior knowledge of the text - read Business texts in English. The elicitation instruments consisting of instructions, posttests, and interviews were constructed based on the Critical Reasoning Part of GMAT Test (Graduate Management Admission Test). The results revealed that, first, cultural schemata appeared to influence readers’ critical reading comprehension. The scores of Business Administration readers were significantly higher than those of the readers of English for Communication. Second, cultural schemata appeared to influence readers’ critical reading strategies. Business Administration readers used Categories E (using background knowledge) and D (establishing intersentential ties) significantly more often than the readers of English for Communication who used Categories A (developing awareness), B (accepting ambiguity), and C (establishing intrasentential ties) more often than the Business Administration readers. Finally, cultural schemata appeared to relate to differences in reasons the readers gave. The reasons the readers of English for Communication responded were linguistic reasons (41%), educational reasons (18%), cognitive-psychological reasons (13%), content - specific category (11%), (un)important category (9%), and uncategorizable category (8%) whereas the reasons Business Administration readers responded were content- specific category (48%), cognitive-psychological reasons (19%), linguistic reasons(10%), educational reasons (10%), uncategorizable category (9%), and (un)important category (4%). This study could conclude that, to enhance critical reading comprehension and processing strategies, instructors need to acknowledge the influence of cultural schemata and integrate them into their instructional designs to facilitate critical reading.
Critical reading is a vital and often difficult reading comprehension task since such reading is a complex process which deals with numerous factors. Even adult readers who never learn to identify claim and evidence of an argument do not understand arguments. One of the most important factors that have been shown to influence text comprehension generally is the reader’s prior knowledge. Schemata theory suggests that prior knowledge facilitates comprehension as well as strategies. Readers develop their comprehension of a text by mapping the information from the text onto their prior knowledge of the text. According to the theory, readers with relatively high prior knowledge for texts performed significantly better than readers with equivalent reading ability but low prior knowledge of the text. For example, in three studies, Stahl, Jacobson, Davis and Davis (1989) investigated the interactive effects of prior knowledge and vocabulary difficulty on students' recall of social studies text. In all three, groups of sixth-grade students were pretaught either relevant or irrelevant information about an Amazonian tribe. All students then read a passage from a fifth-grade textbook, either in the original version or in a version with difficult synonyms substituted for every one out of six content words. In Study 1, both vocabulary difficulty and preteaching affected students' recall of central and supporting information, but the two factors did not interact. Students given the difficult vocabulary version recalled more information out of order, suggesting that vocabulary difficulty might affect the development of a coherent text base. The preteaching appeared to have an independent effect on readers' selection of the most important text to recall. These hypotheses were tested in two other studies. In Study
Cultural schemata also influence main idea construction strategies. Afflerbach (1990) examined the influence of prior knowledge on the strategies used by expert readers to identify and give the main idea of a text when the main idea is not explicit. Expert readers from the fields of anthropology and chemistry read texts from familiar and unfamiliar content domains, and gave verbal reports of the strategies they used in constructing a statement of the main idea. From these verbal reports, the author identified three methods for constructing the main idea: automatic construction, the draft-and-revision strategy, and the topic/comment strategy. Two related strategies were also reported: forming an initial hypothesis and listing words, concepts, and ideas thought to be related to the main idea. Readers reported automatically constructing the main idea statement significantly more often when they had prior knowledge of the content domain of the text, whereas when they lacked such prior knowledge, they more often used the strategy of draft-and-revision. The initial hypothesis and listing strategies were used only in conjunction with at least one of the other strategies. The author hypothesizes that readers lacking knowledge of the content domain may have to resort to strategies rather than constructing the main idea automatically because of the difficulty of the construction task, and possibly also because of the allocation of working memory to other necessary comprehension processes. Thus, although sometimes automatic, expert readers' construction of a main idea is often a mediated, strategic task. The author suggests that instructional materials and instruction should be designed to acknowledge the difficulty of the construction task.
Schemata theory also suggests that cultural schemata enhance reading processing strategies. Pritchard (1990) examined how cultural schemata influence students' reported strategies and their reading comprehension. Sixty proficient 11th -grade readers - 30 from the
Collectively, although there is a large body of empirical investigations that examine how cultural schemata facilitates reading comprehension and strategies, few studies have examined the influence of cultural schemata on critical reading, despite of the fact that critical reading is vital for higher education in all fields. In addition, most of the evidence available on critical reading is mainly drawn from a linguistic perspective and it is still rather speculative and inferential. These limitations therefore motivated the need for additional empirical investigations concerning the influence of cultural schemata on critical reading by replicating Pritchard’s study with several major additions. First, this study focused on critical reading, not reading in general. Next, it examined the influence of cultural schemata on all key elements of critical reading development: critical reading comprehension, critical reading strategies, and reasons for strategies. Then, the subjects in this study were adult readers. Finally, this study added a few measures to verify the influence of cultural schemata on critical reading achievement.
Purpose of the Study
The main purpose of this study is therefore to examine how cultural schemata influence adult readers’ critical reading comprehension and their processing strategies, with three specific purposes:
1. To examine the influence of cultural schemata on students’ critical reading comprehension.
2. To examine the influence of cultural schemata on the readers’ critical reading strategies.
3. To explore the relationship between the strategies they used and the reasons they gave for the strategies they used.
Method
Design
This study collecting quantitative and qualitative data on critical reasoning test employed experimental design.
Subjects
The subjects were 60 proficient readers – 30 from English for Communication (EC) and 30 from Business Administration (BA) – enrolling in these two courses (Practicum 2 or Advanced Business English) at
Instruments
The elicitation instruments consisting of instruction, posttest, and interview were constructed based on the Critical Reasoning Part of GMAT Test (Graduate Management Admission Test).
Since this study aimed to examine the influence of prior knowledge of the text topic on critical reading comprehension and strategies, it was necessary to make sure that they had equivalent argument identification ability. These two groups were therefore given the instruction consisting of explanation which trained them to learn how to identify the claim and evidence. Below is a sample of the instruction.
| Argument 1. Which of the following best completes the passage below? In a survey of job applicants, two-fifths admitted to being at least a little dishonest. However, the survey may underestimate the proportion of job applicants who are dishonest, because ________. (A) some dishonest people taking the survey might have claimed on the survey to be honest (B) some generally honest people taking the survey might have claimed on the survey to be dishonest (C) some people who claimed on the survey to be at least a little dishonest may be very dishonest (D) some people who claimed on the survey to be dishonest may have been answering honestly (E) some people who are not job applicants are probably at least a little dishonest Explanation Fact: In a survey of job applicants, two-fifths admitted to being at least a little dishonest. Conclusion: The survey may underestimate the proportion of job applicants who are dishonest. Assumption: Some dishonest people taking the survey might have claimed on the survey to be honest. |
The posttest asked them to identify and answer questions of 50 arguments. Below is a sample question of the posttest.
| The cost of producing radios in Country Q is ten percent less than the cost of producing radios in Country Y. Even after transportation fees and tariff charges are added, it is still cheaper for a company to import radios from Country Q to Country Y than to produce radios in Country Y. The statements above, if true, best support which of the following assertions? (A) Labor costs in Country Q are ten percent below those in Country Y. (B) Importing radios from Country Q to Country Y will eliminate ten percent of the manufacturing jobs in Country Y. (C) The tariff on a radio imported from Country Q to Country Y is less than ten percent of the cost of manufacturing the radio in Country Y. (D) The fee for transporting a radio from Country Q to Country Y is more than ten percent of the cost of manufacturing the radio in Country Q. (E) It takes ten percent less time to manufacture a radio in Country Q than it does in Country Y. |
The interview asked the readers to give verbal report of their critical reading strategies. Below is a sample question.
Please give the reasons for the strategies you used for each question.
Data Collection
The data collection began with the instruction. After the instruction, the two groups were given posttest. Finally, they were asked to give verbal report of their critical reading strategies. The procedure lasted 15 weeks, each of which took 3 hours.
Data Analysis
The statistical analysis for the quantitative data was ANOVA. The verbal report was qualitatively analyzed by classification, dividing into 22 strategies in 5 categories: (A) developing awareness, (B) accepting ambiguity, (C) establishing intrasentential ties, (D) establishing intersentential ties, and (E) using background knowledge. The reasons of the strategies they used were also classified, dividing into five groups: (A) cognitive-psychological reasons, (B) linguistic reasons, (C) educational reasons, (D) content-specific category, (E) (un)important category and (F) uncategorizable category.
Results
After data collection, ANOVA analysis performed on the posttest scores.
Table 1 Means (and standard deviations) for critical reading comprehension
| EC Readers | BA Readers |
| 18.0667 (4.17656) | 28.7333 (5.35584) |
Table 1 presents means and standard deviations for critical reading comprehension of the EC readers and the BA readers. There was significant difference between the EC readers and the BA readers in the results of critical reading comprehension test, F(1,6) = 8.44, < .05. The scores of BA readers who had prior knowledge of the text were significantly higher than those of the EC readers who lacked prior knowledge of the text. This suggests that cultural schemata appeared to influence readers’ critical reading comprehension.
Also, cultural schemata appeared to influence readers’ critical reading strategies. The BA readers used Categories E (using background knowledge) and D (establishing intersentential ties) significantly more often than the EC readers who used Categories A (developing awareness), B (accepting ambiguity), and C (establishing intrasentential ties) more often than the BA readers. Samples of the BA readers who most often used Categories E (using background knowledge) and the EC readers who most often used Categories A (developing awareness) were presented respectively.
I use relate what I know to anticipate the meaning of the argument, form the gist
of the argument, and identify the parts of the argument. do not understand the argument. I sometimes skip unknown words, often lost Concentration, and finally gave up.
Finally, cultural schemata appeared to influence readers’ critical reading strategies.
Table 2 Percentage of verbal report of critical reading strategies
| Reasons | EC Readers | BA Readers |
| A.Cognitive-psychological B. Linguistic C. Educational D.Content-specific category E.(Un)important category F.Uncategorizable category | 13 41 18 11 9 8 | 19 10 10 48 4 9 |
The verbal report of reasons was then analyzed. The EC readers responded were linguistic reasons (41%), educational reasons (18%), cognitive-psychological reasons (13%), content - specific category (11%), (un)important category (9%), and uncategorizable category (8%) whereas the reasons BA readers responded were content-specific category (48%), cognitive-psychological reasons (19%), linguistic reasons(10%), educational reasons (10%), uncategorizable category (9%), and (un)important category (4%). This suggests that EC readers resort to linguistic reasons whereas BA readers resort to content-specific category reasons.
Discussion
This study is consistent with the study of Stahl, Jacobson, Davis and Davis (1989). It confirmed the hypothesis that cultural schemata influence readers’ critical reading comprehension. Readers with relatively high prior knowledge for critical reading texts performed significantly better than readers with equivalent reading ability but low prior knowledge of the text. Evidently, in this study, the BA readers who had high prior knowledge of the text could perform better than those of the EC readers who have equivalent critical reading ability but lacked or had low prior knowledge of the text.
The results of this study also confirmed the hypothesis of the study that cultural schemata also influence readers’ critical reading strategies. This study is consistent with the studies of Afflerbach (1990) and Pritchard (1990). Readers who lack prior knowledge of the text topic resort to strategies while readers who have relatively high prior knowledge of the topic more often use their knowledge. The results of this study show that the BA readers used Categories E (background knowledge of the text) more often than the EC readers. This might result from the fact that the working memory of BA readers who have higher prior knowledge of the topic lasts longer than that of the EC readers and this memory helps other necessary comprehension processes and information processing which enhance critical reading development. Unlike the BA readers, the EC readers lack prior knowledge necessary for comprehension processes and information processing so they resort to reading strategies rather than the other resource they lack.
The results of this study reveal that critical reading strategies and the reasons they reported verbally relate to some extent. This study is consistent with the study of Afflerbach (1990). In Afflerbach’s study, the readers who have prior knowledge of the text topic constructed main idea automatically with their prior knowledge of the text. Similarly, in this study, almost half of the verbally reported responses of the BA readers who have prior knowledge of the text topic and used Categories E (background knowledge of the text) fell into the content-specific category while those of the EC readers who lack prior knowledge of the text topic and used Categories A (developing awareness) more often fell into linguistic reason category. This suggests that the prior knowledge may affect the dependent relationship between strategies and the reasons of the strategies.
Implication
To enhance critical reading comprehension and processing strategies, instructors need to integrate cultural schemata into their instructional designs. The future inquiry should replicate this study with different subjects and contexts.
References
AFFLERBACH, P.P. (1990). The influence of prior knowledge on expert readers' main idea construction strategies. Reading Research Quarterly, XXIV, 31 – 46.
PRITCHARD, R. (1990). The effects of cultural schemata on reading processing strategies. Reading Research Quarterly, XXV, 273 – 295.
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