Toward Understanding the Effects of Cross-Cultural Schemata and Discourse Structure on Second Language Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Research on second culture and second language reading comprehension is reviewed to support the claim that second language reading is an interactive process, involving the interrelationship of cultural schemata and discourse structure. Studies on content schemata include investigations of the roles of cultural knowledge and second language proficiency in comprehension. Studies on discourse processing include linguistic descriptions of ethnolinguistic discourse patterns (contrastive rhetoric), as well as psycholinguistic comprehension studies on expository prose, story structure, and cohesion. This multidisciplinary review functions as an argument for the roles of cultural schemata and discourse structure in an interactive model of first and second language reading.