Content schema was one problem which seriously hindered many graduates’
academic reading comprehension. Carrell (1987) defined content schemata as “the knowledge, which a reader brought to a text, relative to the content domain of the text”
(p. 461). According to Steffensen, Joag-dev, and Anderson (1979), background knowledge about the content of a discourse profoundly affected the manner the discourse would be comprehended, learned, and remembered. Douglas (2000) emphasized that content schemata is necessary and integral to the concept for specific language purpose. Carroll
and Eisterhold (1983) demonstrated that efficient comprehension involved the ability to relate the textual material to one’s internal knowledge.
In academic reading, graduate students have to utilize a great deal of background knowledge to comprehend texts before digesting the information. However, it is hard for graduate studnets to learn sufficient background knowledge. They constantly encounter new information and new academic vocabulary throughout the reading process. Understanding of unfamiliar academic vocabulary seriously influences a non-English major graduate’s reading comprehension. Understanding a new academic word is not the same as understanding a general English word. If a Chinese reader reads a general word like “camera,” they can look it up in any English-Chinese dictionary to learn what it is. By checking the dictionary, they immediately know what “camera” means, what shape it is, and what function it has because they have already had the background knowledge of a camera.
However, when non-English graduate students encounter some fresh and unfamiliar academic vocabulary, to learn its meaning is not so simple. Checking an English-Chinese dictionary is most likely to be inadequate. The students might still get confused about its exact meaning unless they have already acquired adequate background knowledge of the content. For instance, if one graduate majoring in chemistry reads the word “antinomy” in an academic text, and he/she proceeds to check an English-Chinese dictionary and then finds
“銻”(［ti］). To know the Chinese meaning of “銻” does not mean the reader understands its
use in English. He/She might be still confused about the meaning, characteristics, and function of antinomy as used in the text if the reader has not already possessed relevant knowledge of the content. Cheng (1995) suggested that learners should get familiar with the terminology in their academic fields. Terminology refers to the technical terms of a particular subject. Graduate students need background knowledge in order to figure out the
implications of the numerous and various technical terms they will encounter in academic reading. Nambiar-Gopal (2005) stated that academic reading did not only require readers to identify main points and understand unfamiliar words. The learners had to apply their own schemata or background knowledge to comprehend the text and that was the main difficulty.
Smith (1982) emphasized the importance of prior knowledge in reading. He indicated that readers had to relate new information found in texts to the knowledge they had already possessed. Accordingly, graduates especially require the prior knowledge for their academic reading comprehension. During their university education, graduate students in Taiwan have learned information specific to their field for four years already, so they are supposed to have acquired basic knowledge of their academic fields. However, graduate students still
encounter many problems due to specific information they lack. Thus, it is important for graduates to know how to recognize the new information they read and how to merge it into their existing cognitive concepts.
Cheng (1995) described that some problems in academic reading resulted from a lack of training in reading in their own specialized areas. He stated that in order to comprehend a
complex academic text, readers had to utilize grammar knowledge as well as understood the ideas embedded in the text. According to Alderson and Urquhart (1998), background knowledge strongly affected performance on tests for academic reading comprehension. In their research, graduates from different majors with the same English proficiency
performed differently. Their performance was influenced by the contents of each test.
Readers with specific background knowledge performed better on the test related to their majors. Alderson and Urquhart stated that background knowledge was even more
important than linguistic proficiency in the reading of academic English texts. Alderson and Urquhart (1983), Chen and Donin (1997), and Tan (1990) all brought up that students could understand texts more thoroughly when the content was related to their specific field of expertise. It is important to note that all these studies demonstrated that academic reading require a great amount of background knowledge for comprehension.
Formal Schemata
In addition to content schemata, formal schemata might influence a reader’s
comprehension as well. 謝良足 (1996) stated formal schemata are the knowledge relative to the formal, rhetorical organizational structures of different types of texts. 謝良足 (1996) expressed that “comprehension is determined not only by the local effects of statement or paragraphs, but also by the overall rhetorical organization of a text” (p. 232). She examined the effects of both formal schemata and content schemata in the comprehension of reading
stories. She concluded that both content and formal schemata influenced reading
comprehension and indicated that the order of the text mattered more than content of the text in reading, which was contradictory to Carrell’s study (1987). However, both researchers indicated that the influence of both content and formal schemata could never be ignored in reading comprehension. 林清華 and 孔慧珠 (2000) claimed that text-structure knowledge could lead readers to understand the relationships between main ideas and details. Even though 143 university subjects from engineering department were able to catch the
supporting ideas, they failed to organize the whole article by discovering the framework and missed the central message. 吳美貞 (2005) conducted another study to examine difficulties that graduates might encounter when developing their academic proficiency. She stated that graduates were not good at synthesizing the information they read.
Some graduates check all unfamiliar vocabulary and every sentence or phrase to make sure they do not lose any information from the text. In the process, they usually forget what they read in previous pages, and they continue to lose more and more of the newly learned information with each page. Nambiar-Gopal(2005) encouraged readers to view a text as a whole picture instead of a series of main ideas. Learners need to pick out the main ideas in the text and relate them to the central theme in the overall body of text.
Kaplan (1966) illustrated the structure of the English paragraph. Usually, a topic statement starts the English paragraph, followed by a series of subdivisions to support the
statement. Then, more instances and illustrations are used to develop the central idea and relate it to other ideas that support or disagree with the issue at hand.
劉賢軒 (2003, 2004) conducted two studies to compare the structure of abstracts written by Taiwanese Ph.D. students and international scholars. In academic writing, there are certain formats for abstracts writing . He indicated abstracts written by both Taiwanese Ph.D. students and international scholars included two components: the results and the conclusions. However, some differences still existed between the abstracts. First, more than 80 % of international scholars mentioned the background and purpose of the study in their abstracts; on the contrary, around half of Taiwanese Ph. D. writers did that. Moreover, 60 % of international scholars stated the methods in abstracts whereas only 30 % of
Taiwanese Ph. D. writers mentioned the methods. 劉賢軒 imputed the insufficient contextualization of students’ abstracts to their academic immaturity and English
proficiency. He made a conclusion that the abstracts from international scholars were the summary of the whole thesis and involved background, purpose, method, result, and conclusion. On the other hand, Taiwanese writers paid more attention to the demonstration of the results.
Cremmins (1982) defined that abstracts should be “an abbreviated, accurate representation of the contents of a document” (p. 3). Cremmins also emphasized that a good abstract should be well structured, concise as well as coherent. An abstract should
involve purposes, methodology, results, and conclusions of the study. 郭志華 (1993) recommended that the structure of an abstract is “problem - approach - results - conclusion”
(p. 234-235). Heyland (2000) noted that an academic abstract should contain five elements:
introduction, purpose, method, product, and conclusion.
Readers can understand the general idea of a study by reading its abstract in order to select the proper research for their needs. Moriarty (1997) demonstrated three criteria for the content and structure of journal abstracts. These criteria might be beneficial for academic writers to write the abstracts, as well as helpful for academic readers to read the abstracts.
The first criteria required authors to show the importance of their research. The second criteria required them to display the innovation of their work. The last criteria requested authors to show their findings completely. The criteria suggested writers how to write as well as recommended readers how to read the abstracts in order to select the studies they need.
However, different academic articles in different fields might apply different structural patterns to their abstracts. 劉賢軒 (2004) concluded that graduates should get familiar with different types of abstracts in order to read them and write them efficiently.
Kwan (2006) conducted another study to discover the structures of literature reviews as well as introductions in academic studies. She concluded that the structures of literature reviews and introductions were similar but not exactly the same. Some studies gave literature reviews in chapter one, and used the introduction to locate the problem and inform the
reader the purpose of the study. Swales developed CARS model to describe the typical structure of an introduction (as shown in Table 2.1).
Table 2.1