[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Schema Theory (Rumelhart, 1980)
Linguists, cognitive psychologists, and psycholinguists have used the concept of schema (plural: schemata) to understand the interaction of key factors affecting the comprehension process. Simply put, schema theory states that all knowledge is organized into units. Within these units of knowledge, or schemata, is stored information.
A schema, then, is a generalized description or a conceptual system for understanding knowledge-how knowledge is represented and how it is used. Individuals have schemata for everything.
Long before students come to school, they develop schemata units of knowledge about everything they experience. Schemata become theories about reality. These theories not only affect the way information is interpreted, thus affecting comprehension, but also continue information is received.
As stated by Rumelhart, schemata can represent knowledge at all levels-from ideologies and cultural truths to knowledge about the meaning of a particular word, to knowledge about what patterns of “excitations are associated with what letters of the alphabet. We have schemata to represent all levels of our experience, at all levels of abstraction. Finally, our schemata are our knowledge. All of our generic knowledge is embedded in schemata” (Rumelhart, 1980).
The importance of schema theory to reading comprehension also lies in how the reader uses schemata. This issue has not yet been resolved by research, although investigators agree that some mechanism activates just those schemata most relevant to the reader's task.
The importance of background knowledge in reading is also central to schema theory. This theory claims, reading a text implies an interaction between the reader's background knowledge and the text itself. The knowledge that is organized and stored in the reader's mind is called schemata. According to this theory, fluent readers relate their schemata with the new information present in text.
Many teachers now accept the view that reading is the result of a two-way communication between the reader and the text.................
