선험지식구조론과 영어 듣기ㆍ읽기 교육

This paper has dealt with a number of theoretical concepts associated with the schema theory and its implications for EFL listening and reading instruction. Chapter 2 concerns the study of the definition, characteristics and division of the schema. Schema is a framework of abstract knowledge structure that is both general and reflective of an individual's experiences. And this structure is hierarchically-organized varying according to the listeners’ or readers’ experience. Schema can be divided into two types: rhetoric one and content one. Rhetoric schema is the background knowledge structure of text organization, and content schema is a knowledge structure relative to the content of the text and general world. Recent empirical research has shown the significant role of the two types of schema in the second and foreign language listening and reading. There are two basic modes of information processing: bottom-up one and top-down one. The bottom-up processing is evoked by the incoming date and the features of the date enter the system through the best fitting bottom-level schemata. The schemata, in turn, converge into a higher level, where they are activated. So this processing is sometimes called “data-driven.” The top-down processing, on the other hand, occurs as the system makes general predictions based on the higher general schemata. This processing, therefore, may be described as “conceptually-driven” or “knowledge-driven.” The recent theoretical and teaching trend is toward the top-down rather than the bottom-up approach to language processing. This top-down approach stresses the learning factors such as interest, motivation and background knowledge, and emphasizes the reconstruction of meaning rather than the simple decoding of linguistic form. The meaning reconstruction depends on how much of the listener's and reader's prior knowledge can be utilized in the comprehension process. The comprehension is a constructive process involving the interaction of the bottom-up processing and top-down one. In other words, the constructed meaning is the interactive product of the data -driven process evoked by the incoming data and the conceptually-driven one of the existing world knowledge. Chapter 3 is on some pedagogical implications of the schema theory for EFL listening and reading instruction. The teacher must do more than simply provide the knowledge of the linguistic elements of the target language. There has been a tendency to consider that the main problems of EFL learning are lexical, grammatical and syntactic. But the background knowledge and content familarity along with the traditional intra-sentential linguistic factors deserve as much attention. Some pedagogical considerations for EFL listening and reading have been suggested: pre-listening and pre-reading activity, and the text. When students listen or read unfamiliar text, the teacher can facilitate students' schemata through various activities such as presenting relevant pictures, pre-questioning semantic map. The choice of an appropriate text is one of the most important factors to enhance the students' schema in listening and reading. For the preparation of texts, “narrow listening and reading” and textbooks related to other subjects in school curriculum are suggested.