EFFECTS OF SCHEMA THEORY ON JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL ENGLISH LEARNERS’ PERFORMANCE IN READING COMPREHENSION

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

It is so disheartening to note that the general performances of second language learners‟ reading comprehension are declining. Hence, government, language teachers, parents and public examination bodies are seriously frowning at the situation. The situation has been one of the disturbing aspects of the Nigerian educational system today. Language learning includes four dimensions: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The present study focuses on the dimension of reading as it relates to schema theory. Reading can be seen as a receptive behavior in knowledge acquisition. Effective reading strategies help build reading meta-cognition and increase reading comprehension. Reading comprehension has been regarded as an important academic language skill (Grabe and Stoller, 2001; Gu, 2003) and has received a lot of attention in second language teaching. It is essential particularly to many English as a foreign language learners that rarely have a chance to speak English in their daily lives (Richards and Renandya, 2002; Razi, 2010).

The present study is intended to determine the effect of schema (background knowledge) on second language learners‟ performance in reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is a function of the nature of the text itself and of the extent to which the reader possesses, uses, and integrates pertinent schemata. Background knowledge in reading is a complicated, active thinking mental activity, a thinking process involving experience, ability to predict, verify and acknowledge information according to readers‟ previous information, knowledge and experience, and also an interactive language communication between readers and the writer through text. Learners‟ background knowledge (schemata) has greatly been taking attention in recent theories of second language learners‟ reading potentials. Hence, it is regarded as one of the significant theories of learning.

EFFECTS OF SCHEMA THEORY ON JUNIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL ENGLISH LEARNERS’ PERFORMANCE IN READING COMPREHENSION