Schema effects in EFL reading comprehension

Schemata are known to play an important a role in reading comprehension. Comprehension is seen as the interaction between top-down processing from activated schemata and bottom-up processing from concepts expressed by the text. If readers activate an inappropriate schema, they may miss the meaning of the text. The present study examines the effects of faulty schemata on reading comprehension. At the end of an advanced English reading course at Haifa University, a test of reading comprehension was administered to 125 students. One section of the test contained an advanced level text about love and marriage, a text close to the personal experience of the examinees. Using dictionaries, students translated expressions and sentences and answered short-answer comprehension questions in English. Results indicated that 23% of the wrong answers to the comprehension questions were driven by schemata which differed substantially from the actual content of the text. United Kingdom Reading Association 1998.