Mental Schemas And Reading Comprehension

Since the beginning of written language, people began reading in some sense. With social development, more and more cultural intercourse, people increasingly depend on reading to get the information they want. Reading is playing a more and more important part in people's life. Nevertheless, people didn't begin scientific research on reading until the last hundred years. Since 60s, 70s, in 20th century , especially in 80s, with the development of cognitive psychology, more and more linguists tend to conduct researches on reading process from the perspective of psychology and have achieved fruitful results. Some foreign linguists (Goodman 1967, 1977; Weaver 1980; Carrel 1983; Phillips 1984; Adams 1985; Bensoussan 1986; Silberstein 1987) conducted a series of experiments on reading process. The results of the experiments show that reading comprehension is a complex interactive process between what the writer intends to convey and what the reader has already known Based on the results, Carrel (1983) called reader's prior knowledge "schemas" and thus led to the foundation of "schema theory". According to schema theory, a reader's right interpretation of a text is based on the following two conditions: one is that the reader has appropriate schernas related to the text, the other is that the related schemas are successfully activated in reading process.Since 80s in 20th century, Chinese linguists began cognitive analysis from the perspective of mental schemas on the reading process. The results show that reading speed and reading comprehension of a text is closely related to the activation of the reader's mental schemas. If without appropriate mental schemas oro vithe schemas cannot be activated, the reader can not achieve a real interpretation of the text. The thesis tries to demonstrate the relations between reading comprehension and mental schemas from different perspectives with an aim to facilitate English reading teaching in China.This thesis consists of seven parts, including the introductionpand conclusion. The introduction demonstrates the importance ofreading and the necessity of the study of reading. It also indicates the beginning of serious study and the later development of study in this field. What's the reader's role in reading process? How does the reader get the information he wants from a text? Why do different readers have different comprehension of a same text? Linguists have different explanations on this issue. Traditionally, people think that the reader's role in reading' is passive. The reader's process of comprehension of a text is to recognize letters, string letters into words, words into sentences, and the comprehension will automatically occur. With the development of cognitive science, especially in 1 980s, more and more psycholinguists, through their experiments, demonstrate that the meaning of a text is not merely the accumulation of its sentence meanings. Comprehension process is a process in which the reader's appropriate schemas are activated.. Without appropriate schemas, the reader will know very little about the text no matter how hard he or she tries.Chapter One discusses the definition of schemas. According to Just, Marcel Adam( 1 989):a schema is an abstract structure of knowledge, it is structured in the sense that it indicates relations among constituent concepts, it is abstract in the sense that one schema has the potential to cover a number of texts that differ in particulars. This chapter also expounds the forms in which schemas exist.~,ii7Chapter Two analyses reading and reading process from the perspective of cognitive psychology. Some people compared reading process to "a psycholinguistic guessing game." This Chapter also expounds through vivid examples that the role of sehemas in reading comprehension is indispensable. In this chapter, the author analyses the causes of reading difficulties. Reading difficulties result in the non-activation of appropriate schemas.Chapter Three provid...