背景知识对英语阅读理解能力的影响和积累方法
1. Introduction
As the international communication and cooperation have increased, English becomes more and more important in modern society. It becomes a main way to acquire advanced culture and scientific technology. Learning English has never been of more importance in our society than today.
However, reading is often considered the most difficult in terms of literacy, accuracy, and efficiency. Generally speaking, improving reading skills requires more time of training than improving ing or speaking. What makes EFL learners feel that reading is the most difficult course to handle? What factors affect the reading comprehension of EFL learners? This essay considers that background knowledge is the key factor affecting reading comprehension of EFL learners. This essay firstly gives a brief introduction of two kinds of background knowledge, content background knowledge and formal background knowledge, and then discusses how background knowledge affects reading comprehension of EFL learners. At last, it will present some techniques on how to build up one’s background knowledge, especially formal background knowledge.
2. The Theory of Background Knowledge
The technical term for background knowledge is schemata theory. “Schemata theory describes how knowledge is represented and how new knowledge is integrated with a network of prior knowledge. A powerful feature of schema theory is that it helps explain how new learning is integrated with an individual’s existing knowledge. It explains how we learn, modify, and use information we acquire through our experiences.”[1] P241 There are two types of schemata (a plural form of schema) or background knowledge, content schemata and formal schemata.
2.1 Content Schemata
“Content schemata are claimed to be background knowledge about the content area of a text---a text about washing clothes, celebrating New Year’s Eve in Hawaii, building a canoe, or about the economy of Mexico, the history of Canada, problems of nuclear, etc. In other words, content schemata refer to one’s general knowledge of the world.”[2] P45 Possessing enough knowledge about the area of a topic will significantly aid the comprehension of the text. For example, a group of Chinese EFL learners with sufficient background knowledge about world history, politic, science, economy, etc. may understand a text about the Second World War better than those who lack such knowledge.
2.2Formal Schemata
“Formal schemata refer to background knowledge of formal, rhetorical, organizational structures of different kinds of texts.”[3] P45 In other words, part of our background knowledge includes information about, and expectations of, differences among rhetorical structures---e.g. differences in genre, differences in the structure of fables, simple stories, scientific texts newspaper articles, poetries, etc.” [4] P45 It is well known that different types of articles use different kinds of rhetorical structures and vocabularies. Having adequate formal background knowledge will be of much help to EFL learners.
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.
3.2. The Influence of Formal Background Knowledge on EFL learners’
Reading Comprehension
Understanding texts is not only based on the learner’s content background knowledge, but also on the learner’s formal background knowledge.
This is an example of a paragraph, which indicates the influence of formal background knowledge on EFL learners’ reading comprehension.
(2) He kept on climbing until he reached the top of the doogledorph. He was suddenly engulfed by a dense sleechy. As the wind carried it away, he found himself gazing out over a breathtaking panorama; white peaks surrounded him, some with fluffy sleechies seeming to be skewered on their prints. The klem was a deep blue, and everything seemed to sparkle as the bright sun beamed down. As he looked down into a valley, he saw a two----humped gleep ambling along the riverbank. It was the most unusual one he had ever seen, but he was sure that it was a gleep. He wondered what a gleep was doing in a doogledorph area. They usually inhabited only desert areas.
It is easy to see that this paragraph contains four nonsense words: doogledorph, sleechy, klem and gleep. Few EFL learners can recognize these four words. But if they have enough background knowledge of mountain scenes, camels, and their habits and also can grasp the passage’s main thread of thoughts, they may guess the meaning of new words by referring to the words or the sentences before or after these four words. With adequate background knowledge and guessing words skills, EFL learners can guess the words’ meanings, which may be mountain, cloud, sky, and camel, respectively.
The above two examples demonstrate the existence and operation of schemata in the process of reading comprehension. Therefore, conclusions can be made that it’s a particular schema or background knowledge, which functions at the time of reading comprehension.
Schema plays an important part in reading comprehension. So the main aim is that EFL learners should build up their background knowledge during their daily reading. The following chapter will discuss about some techniques on building up one’s background knowledge in reading comprehension.
4. The Approaches to Build up Background Knowledge for EFL learners’ Reading Comprehension
“According to schema theory, reading comprehension is an interactive process between the text and the learner’s prior background knowledge. The text alone does not carry meaning. Rather a text only provides guidance for learners as to how they should construct the intended meaning from their own previous acquired knowledge. Since comprehension involves not only the information in the text, but also the knowledge the learner already possesses, efficient comprehension requires the ability to relate the textual material to one’s own knowledge, either content background knowledge or formal background knowledge.”[6] P204 The approaches to build up one’s content background knowledge will be discussed in the following chapters.
4.1. The Approaches to Build up Content Background Knowledge for EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension
Content background knowledge is mainly about one’s general knowledge about the world. Building up this kind of background knowledge is mainly attributed to one’s daily accumulation, such as extensively reading, daily life experiences, surrounding culture and environment and so on. It has no other cut-ways or techniques to build up one’s abundant content background knowledge, except EFL learners pay attention to select suitable reading materials. The following passages will focus on discussing the importance of materials selection.
First, reading material should be suitable for EFL learners; it is not only important for EFL learners’ reading comprehension, but also important for them to build up appropriate background knowledge. One of the most obvious reasons why a particular content schema may fail to exist for an EFL learner is that the schema is culturally specific and is not part of a particular learner’s cultural background. For example:
(3)“What could John expect? He had left his wet swimming trunks in the dark closet for over a week. Of course, they had begun to mildew.”
This sentence supposedly contains within it enough experimental content to explain the word “mildew”, But some EFL learners from arid regions may not understand this sentence, because they may lack related culture background knowledge and don’t have such an experience.
Second, EFL learners should read more and extensively and build up more content background knowledge
Another example also indicates that reading more and building up more content background knowledge, which is quite curial for EFL learners in reading comprehension.
(4)“At the way bottom of the earth, high in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, with the sun glaring at midnight through a hold in the sky. I stood in the unbelievable coldness and talked with a scientist in the late fall of 1988 about the tunnel he was digging through time. Slipping his parka back to reveal a badly burned face that was cracked and peeling, he pointed to the annual layers of ice in a core sample dug from the glacier on which we are standing. He moved his finger in time to the ice two decades ago. “Here’s where the US Congress passed the Clean Air Act.” He said. At the bottom of the world, two continents away from Washington, D.C., even a small reduction in one country’s emissions had changed the amount of pollution found in the remotest and least accessible place on earth.”[7] P118
Some EFL learners will find the above passage too difficult to understand what on earth it wants to tell about. But if some EFL learners know about which was written by former vice-president of American, who was an environmental protector, and if they also know some background knowledge about environmental protection, they will find it much easier to understand this passage and judge the attitude of the author.
Therefore, if EFL learners read more of a content area, they will build up more content background knowledge. But they should choose materials, which are suitable for them and effective for them to build up appropriate background knowledge.
4.2. The Approaches to Build up Formal Background Knowledge for EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension
For building up one’s formal background knowledge, there are many basic strategies. The following passages will focus on discussing on how to build up one’s formal background knowledge during reading comprehension for EFL learners about dealing with new words.
New words are strong barriers for EFL learners during reading comprehension. In the course of reading, many EFL learners may come across some new words. At this moment, some of them choose to turn to dictionary, to look up those words in the dictionary for the meaning of the new words. Maybe they think that is an efficient way of learning new words, but too much attention to vocabulary will do harm to the learners’ reading habits, because every time they break off their reading to consult a dictionary, they not only slow down their reading speed, but also even more seriously they interrupt their own thought process. At the same time this will have an effect on the grasp of the general meaning of the passage. In fact, they often meet strange words when they read in their mother language, but they do not stop reading; usually continue reading successfully without using a dictionary. But what should EFL learners do when they encounter unfamiliar words in a passage? Several techniques can be used to deal with new words during the reading comprehension for EFL learners. The following chapters will discuss these techniques in detail respectively.
During reading comprehension, when EFL learners encounter some new words, they can continue reading and then they may realize that these new words can not prevent them from understanding the general meaning of the passage, which means these new words can be ignored. For example:
(5) The train rushes across the Hungarian countryside. In a compartment sit a mother and her attractive daughter, Jane G. Moraine, a Hungarian officer.
When reading this sentence, most EFL learners may find that they cannot recognize the words “Hungarian” and “Jane G. Moraine”, but only if they know that these words are separately place name and human name, that is enough. Because these words cannot influence the understanding of the sentence, they can skip them during reading process.
4.2.2. Guessing the words meaning
If further reading does not work, they can use one or more of guessing words skills to obtain an understanding of the unknown words. Context clues are often used to see information about the new words and grammatical-structures can provide some information about new words, which will be helpful to get the total meaning of a sentence, a paragraph or an essay. And usually, a single word may not have definite meaning or may have many meanings in different context. So in this situation, they need to ascertain its meaning through the context. Such as, the word “stroke”, has many meanings in the dictionary, but when it is put into different contexts, it may have only one meaning, for example,
“(6) He drove in a nail with one stroke of the hammer.
(他一锤子就把钉子敲进去了。)
(7) At the twelfth stroke, we welcomed in the New Year.
(时钟正在敲十二点时， 我们迎来了新年。)
(8) That was his first stroke of good fortune.
(那是他第一回走运。)
(9) The small bridge on the painting was no more than few strokes of a pencil.
(画中的小桥只用铅笔寥寥涂几笔即成。)
(10) Which stroke do you prefer, butterfly or craw?
(你喜欢哪种游泳姿势——蝶泳还是爬泳。)” [8] P46
From the above examples, it’s not difficult to find that context is so important to define a word’s meaning. “Beside words themselves, some information is provided through other words or sentences. The contents or the thoughts expressed through the whole passage have the unity and consistence and they are arranged in the sequence of parts, one loop by loop.”[9] P22 What EFL learners need to do is to grasp its main thread of thoughts. Then by referring to the words before or after the words, learners can also guess the meaning of new words. Those words can also define the new words, explain them, repeat them, negative them or complement them and so on. If these clues can be taken full use of, EFL learners can find reading easier. There are many skills to use the context clues to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words. These may go as the follows:
(i) Guessing Meaning from Definition
When a new word is a term or a complex word, it is usually explained by the sentences or the paragraphs followed, and then EFL learners can infer the meaning of the new word from the sentences or paragraphs, for example,
(12) Anthropology is the scientific study of man. Although most EFL learners don’t know the word “ anthropology”, but the subsequent definition gives enough information to get the exact meaning of the word: 人类学。
(13) Perhaps the most startling theory to come out of kinetics, the study of body movement, was suggested by professor Birdwhistell. EFL learners can infer the word meaning from the definition, that is, 动力学。
(14). Lexicology is a branch of linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of a given language. The meaning of lexicology can be gained by understanding the definition, that is, 词汇学。
The above examples present that when a definition is given, some signal words, such as, “be”, “be called”, “be said”, “mean”, “namely”, “that”, “in other words”, “be defined as”, “refer to”, “be known”, “signify” and so on, will signify that is a definition, which may help EFL learners guess the meaning of the new words.
(ii) Guessing Meaning from Explanation
When the author expounds the characteristic of someone, something or some phenomenon, he will choose to narrate in it in a general way and then explain or expound it in detail. Or on the contrary, he will explain or expound it in a detail way firstly and then sum it up. If EFL learners can obtain the author’s thought, they can guess the meaning of the new words through the detailed explanations or illuminations.
There are a lot of relative explanations in articles, and the author use them just for better expression of thought, some important concepts, difficult terms, or vocabularies, and so on. This information offered by the explanations is relatively easy to utilize them to guess the meaning of words. Nearly the many words and phrases that can signify the information about the new words that EFL learners don’t know such as, “to be”, “mean”, “refer to”, “be defined as”, “be called”, “be termed”, and so on.
If EFL learners obtain such clues, they can guess the words’ meaning more easily. In many cases, some authors use attributive clauses to explain the word’s meaning. So EFL learners also can guess the word’s meaning through this explanation, for the following example:
(15) An expedition is a long organized trip or journey, which is made into an unfamiliar area for a particular purpose by a group of people.
From this explanation, it is easy to guess that “expedition” means 探险。
Sometimes, the author utilizes the punctuation marks, such as, “bracket”, “colon”, “clash”, and so on, to define or explain some new words directly. Undoubtedly, this can provide the EFL learners with good clues to understand or guess the meaning of a new word, for example:
(16) “After the Black Death (a disease which nearly killed half the population of England between 1349 and 1350), Clare College was refunded with money from the Countess of Clare.”[10] p55 From the explanation in the bracket, EFL learners may infer that “Black Death” means 黑死病。
Therefore, during reading process, EFL learners should not stick to the new words and keep thinking over it. They should continue reading it and may obtain the words’ meaning from the following explanation.
(iv) Guessing Meaning from Given Examples
In order to clarify an important concept or make an abstract concept clear, the author usually adopts examples to make EFL learners understand the concept in detail. The examples in the context are just the clues for the EFL learners to infer or guess the meaning of new words. Maybe, some EFL learners can find the examples through some special symbol words, such as, “like”, “for example”, “such as”, “especially”, “include”, “consist of”, “for instance”, “specially”, and so on. For example:
(17) “The consequences of epochal events such as wars and great scientific discoveries are not confined to a small geographical area as they were in the past.”[11] P23
In this sentence, “such as”, is used to indicate an illustration. Therefore, it’s well known that wars and great scientific discoveries are the cases of epochal events. The meaning of “epochal”, will generally be “important”, “great”, “critical”, which is near to its exact meaning“划时代的”。
(18) Defined most broadly, folklore includes all the customs, belief, and tradition that people have handed down from generation to generation.
The examples following the word “include” point out the contents of folklore: “风俗”，“信仰”，“传统”; Combined with common knowledge, it is not difficult to know these contents belong to the field of “民俗学”，and that is the meaning of “folklore”.
(v) Guessing Meaning from Comparison and Contrast
In some cases, the author likes to use the comparison and contrast techniques to represent the similarity and difference between things. Guessing or inferring meaning through synonyms or antonyms is thus a timesaving method. Some authors usually use a synonym or an antonym word that has the similar meaning to explain a new or a difficult word or a key word. What the author has done is just to make his ideas expressed more clearly and EFL learners can just infer the meaning of the new or the difficult word through the clues of the synonym or the antonym. During the process, EFL learners can collect lots of symbol words like, “or”, “like”, “as…” “the same as”, etc, from which EFL learners can easily identify the synonyms, and they can also collect some symbol words like, “in contrast”, “different from”, etc, from which they can guess the new word’s meaning from the antonym. The following two examples can indicate these two cases.
(18) Green loves to talk, and his brothers are similarly loquacious.
“Loquacious” is seldom used and rarely noticed. However EFL learners can infer its meaning through the comparison. The word “similarly” indicates that “be loquacious” is similar to “love talk”, and as a result the word “loquacious” is “健谈的”。
(19) Andrew is one of the most supercilious men I knew. His brother, in contrast, is quite humble and modest.”
The word “supercilious” is really a difficult word. But “in contrast” shows the relationships with the following “humble and modest”, and EFL learners can venture to infer its meaning “not humble or modest”, that is, 目空一切的，傲慢的。So the guessing proves to be correct.
(vi) Guessing Meaning from Cause and Effect Relation
Authors often adopt cause and effect relation to express common and useful logic relations. Cause and effect relation often can provide EFL learners with the information of the meaning of the new words. A certain cause must lead to a certain effect and a certain result must be caused by a certain reason. The author must put the word or the sentence in logic of cause and effect relation when narrating the reason. So EFL learners can easily get the clue to guess the meaning of new words. There are many symbol words for the relation: “since”, “because”, “as”, “therefore”, “due to”, “hence”, “ result in”, “result from”, “as a result”, “for this reason”, “accordingly”, “so that”, “so…that”, “such…that”, and so on. As the following example:
“Josef Hoffmann was regarded as a child prodigy, because he, only a nine-year-old boy, gave a piano recital in Berlin” [12] P55
The word “prodigy” is a new word for some EFL learners. But it is not difficult to infer that “prodigy” means “天才或神童”. Because the following analysis of the reason presents that Josef Hoffmann gave a piano recital in Berlin when he was only nine-year- old boy.
Thus, in the reading comprehension, EFL learners should be familiar with the usual ways, which authors use to present and develop their ideas. Guessing words skills is important for EFL learners reading much faster and more accurately and finally they can become active and proficient EFL learners.
4.2.3. Consulting a Dictionary
During reading comprehension, if EFL learners cannot deal with the new words by ignoring it or guessing it, they can consult a dictionary after finishing reading. Though it will waste a lot of time, it is no doubt a usual way to deal with new words.
5. Conclusion
Reading is not only a one-way activity, but also two-way activity. It is therefore an active process. During reading comprehension, EFL learners should aware that reading is a highly interactive process between learners’ prior background knowledge (content background knowledge and formal background knowledge) and the text itself. Though the immediate goal for reading is to grasp the meaning of the material, the long-range goal is to become independent EFL learners. So EFL learners should learn to choose suitable materials and read more and extensively to build up appropriate content background knowledge. Also, they should build up some formal background knowledge about dealing with new words. “During reading comprehension, the process of identifying and dealing with every culture-specific interferences would make EFL learners more sensitive to interference.”[13] P55 So EFL learners should know how to read, and probably more importantly, they might be stimulated to read more extensively and expand their general knowledge of the world.
References
[1] Arthur W. Heilman & Timothy R. Blair & Willian H. Rupley. Principles and Practicles of Teaching Reading [M] Merrill Publishing Company: 1998.
[2] Unknowing the Author’s Name. How does Background Knowledge Influence Reading Comprehension of Foreign Language Learners [J]. The Journal of the Second Foreign Language College of Beijing: 1995.
[3] 与[2]同.
[4] 与[2]同.
[5] 与[2]同.
[6] 与[1]同.
[7] 叶慧君. 阅读理解策略[M]. 内蒙古大学出版社:2005.
[8] 与[7]同.
[9] Luan Lan. Meaning Guessing Strategies in English Reading [J]. Chang Chun University of Science and Technology (Social Science): 2005.
[10] 与[7]同.
[11] 与[9]同.
[12] Xie Jun. How to Overcome Vocabulary Barrier During Reading [M]. Journal of Heze Medical College: 2000,12(4).
[13] 与[1] 同.
[14] 戴炜栋. 新编简明英语语言学教程[M]. 上海外语出版社: 2002.
