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背景知识对英语阅读理解能力的影响和积累方法(2)

2017-01-27 01:02
According to schema theory, comprehending a text is an interactive process between the learner’s background knowledge and the text. In order to acquire good comprehension of a text, one must have sufficient content and formal background knowledge.
3. The Influence of Background Knowledge on EFL learners’ Reading Comprehension
Tierney and Pearson’s view of reading comprehension is taken as the learner’s construction of meaning from the text. Meaning does not just reside in the text. Instead, it is constructed out of the interaction between a learner’s activated background and what’s in the text. If an EFL learner does not use his or her background knowledge, a significant part of the reading process does not take place. The interactive view of reading considers the importance of both written text and background knowledge in comprehension of text. View of reading comprehension reflects much of the current understanding of the process. Once such an understanding process of the textual message has taken place, the learner tests its accuracy against previous information. Previous information can be the information extracted from a text as well as the learner’s background knowledge on the topic of a text. When the EFL learner confirms that the reconstruction is in agreement with his previous knowledge, and then the understanding of the text begins. If there is some inconsistency or inaccuracy in the reconstruction of a text, the learner may reread the text or may not believe the information of a text until later when a more plausible reconstruction can be confirmed. For EFL learners, language proficiency obviously requires to get relevant information from a text. However, they often depend more on background knowledge of the subject matter than on the linguistic analysis of the text for comprehension and reconstruction of a passage.
3.1. The Influence of Content Background Knowledge on EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension
To illustrate the effects of content background knowledge, first consider the following example.
(1)“By voting against mass transportation, voters have chosen to continue on a road to ruin. Our interstate highways, those much-praised golden avenues built to whisk suburban travelers in and out of downtown have turned into the world’s most expensive parking lots. That expense is economic. These highways have created great walls separating neighborhood from neighborhood, disrupting the complex social connections that help make a city livable.”[5] P46
Neither the structures nor the vocabularies in the text are very complicated. But some EFL learners find it very difficult to comprehend the meaning of the text. The reason is that, in trying to understand this paragraph, learners must have a sufficient knowledge of the specific social cultural background of the text. Otherwise, they will never get the author’s point in the literal sense of words. In reading this passage, many EFL learners may fail to perceive the connection between “mass transportation” and “interstate highways”. The hidden information carried by the passage is that many people in the United States own cars. The individual ownership of cars results in an overburdens of highways and a reduced need for mass transportation. Since so many people drive themselves to work and travel around, the interstate highways in the city causes the semantic associations of congestion and rush hour traffic. The meaning of the phrase “the world’s most expensive parking lots” is associated with this specific urban highway situation. The sentence “These highways have created great walls separating neighborhood from neighborhood, disrupting the complex social connections that help make a city livable,” can be understood that the highways keep people from communication as few people nowadays take buses or trains, on which they could talk to each other. This example implies that covert cultural background is an important factor in reading performance. Differences in values and attitudes are the main sources of problems in foreign language learning. Culture-specific values expressed by the text differ from the values held by the learner. This example clearly illustrates that much of the meaning understood from a text is really not actually in the text, but in the learner, in the background knowledge of the learner.