A Study On The Way In Which Background Information Improves Memory For Text Content

Background information is the introductory material presented prior to a text that provides information related to but not contained within the text. Several types of background information have been studied including text titles, factual information, informational outlines and advance organizers. The bulk of previous research has demonstrated that providing readers or listeners with background information about a text topic can improve their memory and comprehension for the text. Therefore, it is an established method for teachers to start their lectures by providing background information about the to-be-presented topic.Over the past few decades, studies on the effect of background information on text memory and comprehension have been made almost exclusively in schematic view. It is believed that reader's pre-existing knowledge provides the main guiding context through which information is processed and interpreted (Schank, 1978; Schank & Abelson, 1977). To be specific, providing background information can help students to activate the relevant schema, make predictions and draw inferences at all levels. However, schema theory puts almost all of its emphasis on the role of background knowledge and top-down processing and thus is incapable of explaining some of the results of the present study. Therefore, a more scientific, explicit and detailed theory--construction-integration model (Kintsch, 1988, 1998)—is introduced to better reveal the way in which background information improves text memory from the perspective of psycholinguistics. This model involves discourse representation by means of three levels including surface code, textbase and situation model. It also distinguishes between two main processes: a construction process, whereby a textbase containing the surface code (i.e. propositional meaning of the text) is constructed from the text content through bottom-up processing, and an integration process whereby the constructed textbase becomes integrated into the reader's prior knowledge, forming a coherent situation model (i.e. a coherent mental representation of what the text is about) through top-down processing. This model can not only explain the effect of background information on students' recall of text content, which thus further advances students' comprehension ability; but also accounts for how background information improves text memory. Although this model has been widely employed to describe different cognitive processes involved in text comprehension and recall in L1 field, its full potential application in EFL reading still needs to be well explored.On the basis of the construction-integration model, the author intends to address the following two questions to explore the cognitive processes involved in EFL reading:1) How does background information improve memory for text content in EFL reading? By increasing the amount of encoded text content or by forming a more highly organized representation of encoded text content?2) How does readers' English proficiency influence the effect of background information on reading comprehension?These questions were mainly examined in both quantitative and qualitative study. 120 non-English major undergraduates from Shandong University of Technology participated in this experiment. After analyzing the data by using SPSS 10.0, the author came to the conclusion that background information had significant effects on the subjects' memory for text content. Furthermore, the effect of background information on the subjects' memory for text content varies with their English proficiency levels. Specifically, background information helps to form a highly organized representation of the text content for high-proficient subjects while promoting the amount of text content available in memory at the time of encoding for low-proficient subjects.The present study gives an insight into the cognitive processes involved in EFL reading, provides evidence for discriminating schema theory and construction-integration model and more importantly introduces the latter into the study of EFL reading. In addition, the present study gives enlightenments to English teaching for it is evident that different cognitive processes have been involved in English reading for readers of different proficiency levels. Accordingly, teachers need to take these differences into consideration and implement different strategies and teaching methods for different students.