The Misunderstanding Of The Concept Of Schema In Research On Second Language Teaching

The concept of schema dates back to as early as the 1780s, when Kant, German philosopher, provided a persuasive description of what the transcendental schema is in one of his classics, The Critique of Pure Reason. More than one hundred years later, based on his study on the intellectual development of children, Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist, proposed that schemata are the internal cognitive structures, that schemata are gradually constructed, and that the development of schema is the result of the interaction between the individuals and the external world. In 1932, Sir Frederic Bartlett put forward his schema theory, which is actually a theory to account for his findings from the experiments on memory. Since the 1970s, Bartlett's schema theory has developed into modern schema theory. Compared with Bartlett, modern schema theorists are more concerned with a precise formulation of the concept of schema.It has been proven through experiments mostly operated by modern schema theorists that schemata have the functions of guiding discourse comprehension, facilitating inference making, and constructing memory. Therefore, schema theory is applicable to research on language learning and teaching, especially reading teaching. In recent years, schema theory seems to serve as a major theoretical basis for the study on second language teaching and learning at home. The prerequisite for applying a theory is to grasp the nature of the theory, and then the results of studies based on the theory can be acceptable and conducive to future research efforts. However, from the academic articles on the application of schema theory to research on second language teaching, it is found that some researchers in the field of second language teaching tend to equate schemata to background knowledge.This thesis argues that schemata are not background knowledge (the previously acquired knowledge). Schemata in essence are cognitive structures used to codify the reality and categorize the diversified experiences that we obtain through our perception of the world, so that we can make sense of what is going on in the world. Schemata are frameworks of human cognition, and knowledge is the outcome of human cognition. To clarify the concept of schema is conducive to the future research on second language teaching.