Schema Theory Guided Designing Of Reading Part In Interpreting Coursebook

This paper attempts to apply some of the basic notions and typical methods of schema theory to the designing of reading material in interpretation coursebook, and to prove that the specially designed reading part can affect the background accumulation pattern of student interpreters and help them to better utilize the positive effect of background in interpreting process to enhance their performance.The paper starts with reviewing relevant cognitive research on interpreting process and studies on schema theory to probe the heavy cognitive load interpreter suffers during information processing and how background knowledge could relieve the cognitive load to enhance interpreting performance based on the theoretical exploration of schemata storage, background information accumulation and activation of schemata in the interpreting process. The special features of Chinese students bilingualism and the hence brought differentiation in their interpreting process are also been counted as important factors in the analysis. As background information is put into play in the interpreting process by the activation of schemata, while the reading part in interpreting coursebook is among the means of background information accumulation and will significantly affect the accumulation pattern of students, the paper will propose a set of methods of designing the reading part in interpreting coursebook in light of the schema theory. Previous researches in the schema theory applied EFL reading comprehension teaching will be referred to in the devising of the reading part designing proposal. A self-complete questionnaire survey was conducted to demonstrate the possible effect of reading part in interpreting coursebook on the students' background information accumulation pattern. A set of two experiments was carried out to test the effectiveness of the schema theory based design of reading material.