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Keywords: Genre; narrative; expository; Schema Theory; Text Analysis
1. Introduction
The study of a foreign language, like that of most other disciplines is both a progressive experience and a progressive acquisition of a skill. And the progress made in a language when properly taught will not only have positive values but will also lay a foundation upon which further progress can be built. Progress is relative to the emphasis given to the instructional program and to the interests and aptitude of the learner.
Stern (1983) argues that in the twentieth century the concept of learning as it is understood today, has been greatly influenced by the psychological concept of the learning process, which includes not only the learning of skills or the acquisition of knowledge, it also refers to learning to learn and learning to
Iranian Journal of Language Studies (IJLS), Vol. 2(1), 2008 (pp. 41-74)
42 Ashraf Haji Maibodi
think; the modification of attitudes, the acquisition of interests, social values or social roles and even changes in personality (p.18).
Learning theory provides the foundation for linguistic theory and language acquisition theory. As researchers learn more about learning and theorists revise previous theories, linguists alter their views of language and language educators change their perspectives on language, learning and teaching (Chastain, 1988).
Reading is one of the four skills of learning that a student has to master in learning the language. It is a basic and a complementary skill in language learning. Reading requires that the reader focus attention on the reading materials and integrate previously acquired knowledge and skills to comprehend what someone else has written. Chastain (1988), claims that sometimes erroneously called a passive skill because the reader does not produce messages in the same sense as a speaker or writer, reading nevertheless requires mental processing for communication to occur. Reading is a receptive skill in that the reader is receiving a message from a writer. Also referred to as a decoding skill, the terminology implies the idea of language as a code, one which must be deciphered to arrive at the meaning of the message.
One of the recent approaches to reading in EFL/ESL is the 'Interactive Model', proposed by Eskey (1988). In this model 'interaction' between the reader and the text, and the other is the interaction between lower and higher levels of reading process. Fluent reading results from the simultaneous interaction and operation of these two skills. Lower level skills, are known as identification skills such as, recognizing words and sentences necessary for decoding and extracting explicit information. Higher level skills require more cognitive effort including reading between the lines to find the implicit information and understanding the writer's point of view and making interpretations. Studies developed in the field of reading reveal that reading is a more complex process in which the reader combines the textual information with his/her background knowledge and skills to recreate the writer's intended meaning. Perfetti (1984), defines reading as "thinking guided through print".
Traditional approaches to reading describe comprehension, as a matter of simply extracting the meaning of words as isolated concepts. Reading to improve pronunciation, practice grammatical forms and study vocabulary do not constitute reading at all because by definition, reading involves comprehension. When readers do not comprehend, they are not reading. Today foreign languages are learnt by a number of students who will never have the opportunity of conversing with native speakers, but who will have access to the literature and periodicals or scientific and technical journals, written in the language they are learning.
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Language students need large amounts of comprehensible input, and reading materials provide the most readily available source. Stephen Krashen (1982), argues that the primary purpose of beginning-level L2 courses is to provide students with interesting and comprehensible language input in a low anxiety setting, i.e. texts that are based on a narrative genre that does not focus the syllabus on grammatical structures or thematically organized vocabulary but on simple yet powerful medium that provides students input: interesting and comprehensible input. He suggests that L2 is most successfully acquired when conditions are similar to those present in L1 acquisition: when the focus of instruction is on meaning rather than on form.
Readers rely on their prior knowledge and world experience when trying to comprehend a text. The organized knowledge that is accessed during reading is referred to as schema (plural schemata). Since reading by definition signifies comprehension, the phrase 'reading process' implies an active cognitive system operating on printed material to arrive at an understanding of the message. Readers make use of their schema when they can relate what they already know about a topic, to facts and ideas appearing in a text. The richer the schema is for a given topic the better the reader will understand the topic.
Understanding of a text is constrained by the perceptions of the topic. The reading process, therefore, involves identification of the text genre, formal structure and topic, all of which activate schemata and allow readers to comprehend the text. Some students' apparent reading problems may be problems of insufficient background knowledge (Carrell, 1988b). Where, this is thought to be topic related it has been suggested that 'narrow reading' within the students' area of knowledge or interest may improve the situation. Evidence shows that good and poor readers do not always use their schemata appropriately or are even unaware of whether the information they are reading is consistent with their existing knowledge. Also it is seen that students who do not spontaneously use schemata as they read will engage them if given explicit instructions prior to reading (Bamford, 1997). Grellet, states that proficient readers do not concentrate on sentences and words. Instead they start with global understanding and then work toward comprehension of detailed aspects of the reading (cited in Chastain, 1981).
Teachers who understand that reading is a strategic process should establish environments that provide opportunities for students to not only learn the language but also learn about language while they are using it for real purposes. To initiate and sustain interaction in the classroom is the teacher's responsibility most of the time, so the teacher's performance is as important as the learner for a complemented interactive process (Brown, 1994; Nunan, 1995; Todd, 1997).
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