Nassaji - Schema Theory

Language Learning
ISSN 0023-8333
Schema Theory and Knowledge-Based Processes in Second Language Reading Comprehension: A Need for Alternative Perspectives
Hossein Nassaji
University of Victoria
How is knowledge represented and organized in the mind? What role does it play in discourse comprehension and interpretation? What are the exact mechanisms whereby knowledge-based processes are utilised in comprehension? These are questions that have puzzled psycholinguists and cognitive psychologists for years. Despite major developments in the eld of second language (L2) reading over the last two decades, many attempts at explaining the role of knowledge in L2 comprehension have been made almost exclusively in the context of schema theory, a perspective that provides an expectation-driven conception of the role of knowledge and considers that preexisting knowledge provides the main guiding context through which information is processed and interpreted. In this article, I rst review and critically analyze the major assumptions underlying schema theory and the processes that it postulates underlie knowledge representation and comprehension. Then I consider an alternative perspective, a constructionintegration model of discourse comprehension, and discuss how this perspective, when applied to L2 reading comprehension, offers a fundamentally different and more detailed account of the role of knowledge and knowledge-based processes that L2 researchers had previously tried to explain within schema-theoretic principles. Keywords Schema theory, knowledge-based processes, text-based processes, L2 reading comprehension, construction-integration models
Introduction Any attempt to explain the processes whereby the text is understood entails a profound understanding of the cognitive processes in which knowledge is
The author would like to thank Alister Cumming, Cordon Wells, three anonymous reviewers, and the editor, Nick Ellis, for helpful comments on initial drafts of this paper. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Hossein Nassaji, Linguistics Department, University of Victoria, PO Box 3045, Victoria, BC, Canada VSW 3P4.
Language Learning 57:Suppl. 1, June 2007, pp. 79113 C 2007 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan
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A Need for Alternative Perspectives
represented, processed, and used in comprehension. The concept of schema was originally proposed by Bartlett (1932), a follower of Gestalt psychology, to account for how information in stories and events is recongured in memory for further recall. Bartlett believed that understanding and recall take place mainly in the context of past experience and with reference to the relevant information in memory. He then used the term schema to refer to the organization of such past experience. Bartlett, however, did not explicate the nature of this organization. It was later on in the 1970s and 1980s, and as a consequence of the advances in computer science and the researchers interests in modeling human cognition in the eld of articial intelligence at this time, that schema theory was developed and emerged as a theoretical framework to describe the structure and the role of knowledge in the mind (e.g., Minsky, 1975; Schank, 1982; Schank & Abelson, 1977). Schema theory provided new and exciting developments in the eld of cognitive psychology. The theory was used to explain and interpret a host of cognitive processes, such as inferencing, remembering, reasoning, and problem solving, and served as an impetus for a large volume of experimental research in learning, comprehension, and memory (e.g., Adams & Collins, 1979; Anderson, 1984; Anderson & Pearson 1984; Anderson, Reynolds, Schallert, & Goetz, 1977; Bloom, 1988; Bransford & Franks, 1971; Bransford & Johnson, 1972; McDaniel & Kerwin, 1987; Schallert, 1991). One of the major insights of schema theory lay in drawing attention to the constructive nature of the reading process and to the critical role of the reader and the interaction between the text and the readers background knowledge. These developments greatly inuenced second language (L2) comprehension research and instruction, resulting in a large volume of insightful research on evaluating and demonstrating the role of conceptual and background knowledge in L2 reading comprehension and instruction (e.g., Alderson & Urquhart, 1988; Barry & Lazarte, 1995; Carrell, 1987, 1992; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983; Carrell & Wise, 1998; Floyd & Carrell, 1987; Hudson, 1982; Lee, 1986; Peretz & Shoham, 1990, Roller & Matambo, 1992; Steffenson & Joag-Dev, 1984; Tan, 1990). However, the observation that background knowledge contributes to comprehension is not at issue in this article. Although the relationship between background knowledge and reading comprehension has often been found to be far more complex than is usually assumed in both rst language (L1) and L2 (see, for L2, Bernhardt 1991; Bugel & Buunk, 1996; Carrell & Wise, 1998; Hudson, 1982; and see, for L1, Valenica & Stallman, 1989), few would dispute the observation that background knowledge is critical to comprehension (see
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Carver, 1992, for a contrary opinion). Rather, my focus is on how background knowledge and the principles underlying its use and interaction with other sources of information should be conceptualized in L2 reading comprehension. In this context, a distinction needs to be made between background knowledge and a theory of that knowledge. This distinction is necessary to prevent confusion between what and how, or knowledge, and the way its representation and use is conceptualized and explained. In L2 research, the two notions of background knowledge and schema theory have sometimes been equated and/or used interchangeably (e.g., Carrell, 1983, 1985; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983). The present article is organized into three sections. The rst section discusses the major assumptions underlying schema theory as a theory of knowledge, evaluating them in light of research in the eld of reading and cognitive psychology. The second section considers an alternative perspective and discusses how such a perspective offers a fundamentally different and more detailed account of the role of knowledge and knowledge-based variables previously explained in terms of schema-theoretic principles in comprehension. In the last section, I discuss the implications of this analysis for L2 reading theory and research. Schema Theory: Key Issues and Assumptions The notion of schema and schema theory has had broad theoretical applications in the eld of cognitive psychology. Taking different forms, the concept has been used to describe the structure of knowledge in a variety of domains. Being dened as scripts (Schank & Abelson, 1977), plans (Schank, 1982), and frames (Minsky, 1975), schemata have been used to describe the structure of knowledge of ordinary events. The concept has also been used to describe the structure and orgnisation of linguistic and discourse knowledge, resulting in the use of a number of other terms such as sentence schemata (Winograd, 1983), story schemata (Johnson & Mandler, 1980; Mandler, 1978), formal/rhetorical schemata, content schemata (Carrell, 1984), textual schemata (Swaffar, 1988), and symbolic schemata (Oller, 1995). That the concept has been used so ubiquitously and diversely has been discussed as one of the major problems of schema theory in the literature (e.g., Brewer & Treyens, 1981; Brown, 1979; Sadoski, Paivio, & Goetz, 1991; Taylor & Crocker, 1981). However, in all of these areas, the major strengths of the theory have been argued to stem from the insights it provides into understanding the structure of knowledge and the way knowledge is represented and used in learning,
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comprehension, and inferencing (Anderson, 1984; Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Rumelhart, 1980; Rumelhart & Ortony, 1977). In this context, three major issues have been the focus of discussion and examination: (a) how knowledge is represented in the mind: (b) how knowledge is used in comprehension: and (c) how inferences are made in comprehension. In what follows, I will discuss and critically examine each of these issues as conceptualized by schema theory. How Knowledge Is Represented in the Mind The issue of how knowledge is represented in the mind is a theoretically vexing question, the discussion of which has been inuenced not only by competing and at times radically different theoretical positions but also by different epistemological and philosophical beliefs. Reviewing the pertinent research literature, Alba and Hasher (1983) identied ve major processes postulated by schema-theoretic views to underlie how knowledge is represented in the mind. These processes are selection, abstraction, interpretation, integration, and reconstruction. According to schema theory, mental representations are formed selectively; that is, of all the information in a given situation, only that part of the information that is related to the schema activated at the time of encoding is selected for the purpose of representation. Mental representations are also abstractive in that of all the information present, only its semantic components are extracted to be encoded in memory, not its surface components. Schema theory suggests that interpretation of new information hinges on its congruency with the schema currently activated. Individual pieces of information cannot exist in the mind on their own either; they have to be integrated into an organized and coherent global representation. Finally, the theory presumes that readers recall or reconstruct the information with reference to the schema activated during encoding. Alba and Hasher (1983) provided an extensive review of the studies that have examined these processes, concluding that the quality, amount, and the complexity of information represented in the mind and remembered is far greater than what could possibly be produced by what they called the reductive schematheoretic processes. The studies they cited have shown that our memory for information embodies many more formal details than what the abstraction processes of schema theory predict. Even the lexical and syntactic details of a message are processed and encoded in memory (Kintsch & Bates, 1977). A further assumption that syntactic and lexical formats will be stored but fade away quickly does not seem to be supported by research, which has shown that these properties of messages could not only be remembered (Anderson & Paulson, 1977; Keenan, McWhinney, & Mayhew, 1977) but also retained for as
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long as a week after the presentation of the information (Christiaansen, 1980). Research also suggests that the meaning components of a message, while helpful, are not necessary for integration processes. Integration can take place even when items do not comprise any meaning relationships, such as letter-digits or nonsense syllables (e.g., Katz & Gruenewald, 1974; Small, 1975). Such evidence poses serious trouble for schema theory, which theorizes that integration occurs at an abstract and semantic level. How Knowledge Is Used in Comprehension Three assumptions are implicit in schema-theoretic approaches concerning the way knowledge is utilized in comprehension: (a) that schemata are preexisting knowledge structures stored in the mind, (b) that comprehension is a process of mapping the information from the text onto these preexisting knowledge structures, and (c) that knowledge-based processes are predictive and readerdriven. Certain difculties arise from these assumptions about the role of knowledge in comprehension. First of all, the idea that our knowledge base exists in preexisting formats provides a very static and inexible view of the role of knowledge, which is at variance with the dynamic nature of knowledge in human cognition. After all, the notion of schemata as prestructured frameworks activated and used during comprehension comes from computer science and the eld of articial intelligence. Such schematic patterning assumes permanence, frame-likeness, and long-term internal connection and advances the idea that the mind is like a machine containing knowledge in a form that can be accessible whenever needed (Iran-Nejad, 1987; Kintsch, 1988; Kintsch & Mannes, 1987). This storage conception of the role of the mind is notably limited in its explanation of many areas of human learning, which involve productivity and creativity of knowledge (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1996; see Case, 1996, for a discussion of the different views on knowledge in education). A second difculty involves a bias toward activation and use rather than construction in comprehension. Although schema theorists suggest that schemata can be created, changed, modied, and used (Anderson, 1977; Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Rumelhart, 1980), the bulk of the literature on schema theory has emphasized using and activating rather than creating schemata. Bransford (1985) argued that although in education the issue of schema acquisition is paramount, nearly all the experiments used to support schema theory involve situations where students are prompted to activate preexisting schema (p. 389). In this view, if readers do not have the appropriate schema (or if they do have it but dont activate it), comprehension will simply fail (Carrell, 1984; Lee, 1997;
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Rumelhart, 1980). However, if we assume that in order to understand texts, readers must activate an already existing schema, the question is raised as to how readers determine how to read before activating that schema (Norris & Phillips, 1987). This means that the reader should not be able to proceed before using a schema. Yet, in order to use the schema, the reader must have already understood the text, because for something to be information, and not just ink marks on a page, it must be understood. However, for the ink marks on a page to be understood one must, by hypothesis in schema theory, have a schema. This leads to a problem wherein schemata are needed to ll slots in schemata ad innitum (Norris & Phillips, p. 293). This, as Norris and Phillips pointed out, is a vicious cycle and schema theory does not adduce any executive mechanism to stop the cycle. Another difculty arises from attempts to reify abstractions and attribute actual existence to conceptual notions (Sadoski et al., 1991). Sadoski et al. argued that schemata are, by most accounts, abstractions derived from experience that exist in a potential, nonspecic state, awaiting input, so these notions cannot exist isolated from any of the examples that gave rise to it (p. 467). Such notions, these researchers contended, are problematic for scientic theorizing because in such cases it is difcult to formulate alternatives or dene variables that could be adequately investigated. I take a specic instance of this dilemma. Schema theory suggests that for different concepts there are abstract prototypical schemata that are stored in memory in terms of features necessary for all instances of those concepts (Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Rumelhart, 1977, 1980). The assumption is that there exist certain shared features that can be represented in the form of category types. However, it has been very difcult to determine what these dening features are and how they are represented (see Keil, 1989, for a discussion of this issue). Anderson and Pearson (1984) also noted the difculty with this view. Citing early scholars such as Wittgenstein (1953), who showed the difculty of stipulating features needed for most of the familiar concepts, Anderson and Pearson suggested that, if that is the case, the basis for positing that knowledge consists of abstract summaries of particular cases begins to erode (p. 267). A fourth issue concerns the way the role of background knowledge is conceptualized by schema theory. Schema theory suggests that background knowledge constitutes the main guiding context through which information is sieved to be interpreted (Schank, 1978; Schank & Abelson, 1977). However, it is now quite established that the comprehension process does not proceed in such a top-down mode. Research in the eld of L1 language reading comprehension has shown that individual words in a text are processed visually even when they
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are highly predictable in the context (Balota, Pollatsck, & Rayner, 1985; Pollatsek, 1993; Rayner, 1986; Rayner & Sereno, 1994). The top-down view of the role of knowledge has lost much of its previous theoretical appeal in L2 reading, too. A growing body of L2 research now exists to document the critical role of lower level processes in L2 reading comprehension (e.g., Haynes & Carr, 1990; Horiba, 1996; Koda, 1992, 1998, 1999; Nassaji & Geva, 1999; Segalowitz, Poulsen, & Komoda, 1991; Segalowitz, Segalowitz, & Wood, 1998). As a consequence of these developments, most of the current models of L2 reading comprehension are interactive in that L2 comprehension is considered to be a process consisting of both data-driven and reader-driven processes (e.g., Bernhardt, 1991; Carrell, Devine, & Eskey, 1988; Grabe, 1991; Swaffar, 1988; Swaffar, Arens, & Byrnes, 1991). However, it is important to note that none of these models species how the reading system works and how the interaction between the different knowledge sources takes place (Brown, 1998). Furthermore, certain areas of L2 reading still seem to be biased implicitly or explicitly toward the reader-driven conceptions of the role of knowledge. This bias is strongly discernible in the eld of L2 reading instruction (Paran, 1996). Even in the area of L2 research, there is still a relatively much larger volume of research on the role of top-down conceptual variables than lower level textbased variables. In particular, attempts at understanding and explaining the role of conceptual variables in L2 research are still made almost exclusively in the context of schema and schema theory (see Fitzgerald, 1995). I will discuss some of these areas later, and then will show how they can be dealt with and explained in a more detailed manner by an alternative view of the role of knowledge in L2 reading comprehension. How Inferences Are Made in Comprehension Inferencing is one of the most widely accepted schema-theoretic notions; it is assumed to be mostly made on the basis of the readers prior schemata (Anderson & Pearson, 1984). There is no doubt that successful comprehension depends on inferencing at all levels of text comprehension, ranging from connecting text to background knowledge, different parts of the texts to one another, and known elements to unknowns. However, there is extensive disagreement among psychologists as to how these processes take place. Within a schema-theoretic perspective, Anderson and Pearson (1984) identied four types of inference in reading comprehension. These are (a) schemaselection, the inference made about what schema among many potential ones should be used to comprehend a particular text; (b) schema instantiation, the inference about what slots of the selected schema should be instantiated or
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what values should be assigned to a particular slot of a selected schema; (c) default inferencing, which involves assigning default values to slots of an already activated schema; and (d) absence of knowledge inferencing, which involves drawing conclusions in the absence of certain knowledge. Anderson and Pearson did not elaborate on the fourth kind of inferencing but illustrated it with logic: If X were true, I would know it were true. Since I do not know X to be true, it is probably false (pp. 269270). There are several studies that have been designed to provide support for these different types of inferencing. For example, a series of studies was conducted by Anderson and his colleagues to demonstrate evidence for schema-selection inferences (Anderson & Pichert, 1978; Anderson, Pichert, & Shirey, 1983; Anderson, Reynolds, Schallert, & Goetz, 1977). These studies presented people with ambiguous passages that could be read and interpreted in different ways. According to Anderson and Pearson (1984), readers interpret ambiguous texts differently because of the different schemata they select based on the different clues available in the text. Anderson et al. (1977), for example, asked college students to read two texts, each allowing two different interpretations; one could be interpreted as involving either a prisoner trying to escape from a prison or a wrestler trying to escape from a hold by his rival in a wrestling match, and the other as a card game or a music practice. The results indicated that readers who had a musical background interpreted the second passage as a passage about music and those who had a card-playing background interpreted the same passage as a passage about card games. Other studies have used vague passages that are difcult to understand and remember without knowing what the passages are about. An example of these studies is a classic study by Bransford and Johnson (1972), in which people were presented with two vague passages: one the Balloon Serenade passage and the other the Washing Clothes passage. One group received the vague passages with titles and the other group without. The results indicated that those people who received the passages with titles had much better comprehension and recall than those who received them without titles. Anderson and Pearson (1984) argued that these studies provide support for schema-instantiation inferencing: To understand such passages, readers must use an already selected schema to make sense of the vague passage by instantiating its slots and lling the slots and gaps within the activated schema. Although the above studies provide relevant evidence for the role of background knowledge, they have been questioned on interpretive and methodological grounds. Sadoski et al. (1991) questioned the validity and generalizability of these studies, arguing that their reliance on bizarre texts calls into question
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their relevance to the reading of naturally occurring texts (p. 470). These researchers argued that although all texts may have some degree of ambiguity, a normal text is never amenable to such vastly different interpretations as permitted in the texts used in Anderson et al.s (1977) study. Studies using vague passages (see Bransford & Johnson, 1972) have also been questioned on similar methodological grounds. One of the problems with such studies concerns the use of passages that are incomprehensible on their own. Alba and Hasher (1983, p. 220) noted, Their [Bransford and Johnsons] passages contain no explicit, concrete referents, and without a context to suggest exemplars for these referents, none is likely to be inferred. These researchers maintained, It is not surprising then that recall of these materials is so poor; subjects had in effect been presented with a set of unrelated sentences. Studies involving vague passages may be questionable on other grounds, too. In such studies people are presented with not only textually poor passages but with passages with no context. So there are two variables involved in making the text difcult to understand: one the nature of the passage itself, and the other the lack of context. If people performed poorly on such passages, it is not at all clear why they did so. Was it because of the lack of context or because of the poor quality of the text? It is quite possible that improvement of the writing quality of the text could improve their comprehension and recall as well (e.g., Cot e, Goldman, & Saul, 1998; McNamara & Kintsch, 1996; Moravcsik & Kintsch, 1993). Among all the schema-based inferencing types, default inferencing is the one most studied. According to schema theory, when a reader reads a text, a certain schema is activated in which the reader lls in the slots with default values of that schema. For example, if in reading a text, a reader encounters a sentence such as He pounded a nail into the wall, the word hammer, which is one of the default values associated with the verb pound, will be simultaneously activated and used to ll in the empty slot for the agent of the verb, leading to the inference that the pounding has been probably done with a hammer. Most of the support for default inferencing comes from research in which people have been presented with certain information such as a sentence that vaguely implies certain concepts, and then when tested, they have judged that the information implicit in the sentence is part of the original sentence. This reported misrecognition is taken as evidence for default values provided by the schema (e.g., Anderson et al., 1976; Glenn, 1978; Johnson, Bransford, & Solomon, 1973; Keenan & Kintsch, 1974). Such studies, however, have been questioned on the grounds that the recall and the recognition techniques
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used reect processes that are reconstructive rather than constructive, that is, processes used to recall or remember rather than processes used to understand the text (McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992, 1995; Singer, 1988; Whitney, 1987). In other words, it is not clear whether the inferences these studies have shown to have occurred did actually occur during comprehension or during the time subjects were tested to recall or to recognize the information. Another line of support for default inferencing comes from studies that have used cues for recall. These studies have shown that cues implied during comprehension are effective retrieval cues for implicit information in the text. McKoon & Ratcliff (1981) found that readers were faster in making inferences about the instrument of an action (e.g., a hammer) when the sentence in the paragraph of the text implicitly indicated that the instrument had been used (Bobby pounded the boards together with a nail vs. Bobby stuck the boards together with glue). Other studies, however, have shown that the same cues could also be effective recall cues even when the information is explicitly provided in the text. Corbett and Dosher (1978) found that an instrument (e.g., a shovel) could serve as an effective retrieval cue both for when the people were presented with a sentence with a highly likely instrument for an action, such as The man dug a hole, and also when the sentence explicitly mentioned the instrument, such as The man dug a hole with a pitchfork. The researchers concluded that the fact that even in the latter case where the instrument had been explicitly mentioned, the word shovel could serve as an effective retrieval cue suggests that such inferences could not have been due to using the sentence schema but must have been due to semantic associations activated by the cues themselves. Finally, default inferencing assumes that semantic structures residing in the readers mind equip the reader with a slot-lling mechanism that operates in a continual manner during comprehension, thereby predicting an innite number of default inferences in comprehension (McNamara, Miller, & Bransford, 1991; Whitney, 1987). Research, however, has produced little support for this prediction. Numerous studies have shown that such inferences are not made so amply in reading (e.g., Dosher & Corbett, 1982; McKoon & Ratcliff, 1981, 1992, 1995; Singer, 1979, 1980). These studies have shown that inferences about the agent or instrument of actions (e.g., a shovel for digging a hole), which are highly predicted schematically, are not in fact made in comprehension. An Alternative View of the Role of Knowledge The aim of this section is not to provide solutions to all of the problems of schema theory. Unfortunately, at present no comprehension theory exists that
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can take account of the whole range of issues discussed. Instead, the aim is to consider an alternative perspective on the role of knowledge in comprehension and to see how this perspective, particularly when supplemented with ideas from memory research, can offer a more encompassing account of the role of knowledge and knowledge-based processes in L2 reading comprehension. The perspective is based on models inuenced by research on human memory and recall (e.g., Albrecht & OBrien, 1993, Gernsbacher, 1995; Goldman & Varma, 1995; Kintsch, 1998; McClelland, 1987; McClelland & Rumelhart, 1986; Myers & OBrien, 1998; Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). Their signicant contribution has been the attempts to describe in an explicit and detailed way the different cognitive processes involved in text comprehension and recall. These models differ from one another; however, they all share a common conception of the role of knowledge in comprehension. Among these models, I will consider Kintsch and his colleagues discourse comprehension models, particularly, Kintschs (1988, 1998) construction-integration model. This model has been well researched in recent years by L1 reading researchers and is now one of the most widely accepted scientic models of text comprehension in the literature (Sadoski, 1999; Sanford & Garrod, 1998). Although it would be imprecise to hold that the model has not been recognized in L2 reading, it appears that its full potential application in L2 reading comprehension theory and research has not been well explored. Kintschs theory of text comprehension was developed in conjunction with research on knowledge activation in psychology and the suggestion that the idea of schema as posited in articial intelligence approaches is not applicable in the context of human comprehension. Kintsch (1988) believed that prediction or expectation-based systems that use frames or scripts do not adapt easily to new contexts; pre-structured knowledge hardly ever is exactly in the form that is needed (p. 180). Kintsch argued that if schematic notions are powerful enough, they are too inexible, and if they are general enough, they fail in their constraining function (p. 164). Thus, he and his colleagues began to develop an alternative, less rigid, and less controlled view of the role of knowledge than the one suggested by schema theory. The rst version of their model was proposed by Kintsch and van Dijk (1978) and then revised and elaborated on by van Dijk and Kintsch (1983). Further revisions and elaborations were made by Kintsch (1988), culminating in a considerably detailed version of the same model in Kintschs recent (1998) book, Comprehension: A Paradigm for Cognition. The model is too complex to review here, but I will consider its key ideas. The model distinguishes between two main processes: a construction process, whereby a textbase containing the propositional meaning of the text is
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constructed from the textual input, and an integration process, whereby the constructed textbase becomes integrated into the readers global knowledge, forming a coherent mental representation of what the text is about or a situation model. In Kintschs model, comprehension depends heavily on knowledge. But the organization of knowledge is not prestored (cf. Schank, 1982); rather, it emerges in the context of the task and is relatively unstructured as opposed to the highly structured knowledge representations suggested by semantic theories such as schema theory (Kintsch, 1998). This organization is in the form of an associative network of propositions,1 which are generated in a bottom-up manner by the textual data. The process of constructing the textbase occurs in several steps. First, text propositions corresponding to the actual semantics of the text (also called micropropositions) are constructed directly from words and phrases in the text. The propositions thus generated activate in the knowledge net other propositions and their associates, both relevant and irrelevant, leading to a semantic network that includes both coherent and incoherent representations. This net will be revised subsequently through a process of elaboration and inference, in which the textual propositions as well as their randomly generated neighbors will be constrained by the readers knowledge base. Additional compatible propositions will also be inferred. The nal step involves organizing the textbase and assigning values to the different concepts and propositions. At this stage, the propositions generated are linked together and become interconnected with both their previous and subsequent propositions, representing the local meaning relationships (or the microstructure), and with higher level concepts in the network, representing the more global relationships in the text (or the macrostructure). These connections create a kind of local coherence between and across the different individual propositions and between the propositions and the overall topic of the discourse, which are then used to draw inferences. Once this initial semantic net is constructed, the integration processes take over, in which the information content produced so far becomes integrated into the larger discourse context, generating a mental representation or situation model. Integration is a ne-tuning process that occurs at all levels of text processing, including word, sentence, and discourse levels. These processes occur in short iterative cycles, in each of which a new network of textual meaning is constructed, processed, and then immediately integrated with what is retained in the working memory from the previous cycle; this is then repeated in new cycles. The integration process goes on until all of the inconsistencies in the mental representation of the text are eliminated, such that a coherent interpretation emerges. It is important to note that all of these processes are automatic
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and occur through connectionist principles, in which the more appropriate and essential propositions about the current state of comprehension are augmented and the less appropriate ones are inhibited in an associative manner (Kintsch, 1998). However, if this automatic process fails, the reader may engage in more strategic problem-solving processes (Garrod & Sanford, 1998; Kintsch, 1988; van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). How propositions are actually constructed is beyond the scope of this article. In fact, Kintschs construction-integration model itself did not include any specic mechanism for how propositions are generated, but there are now different accounts available that specify how these meaning units are constructed. One prevalent account is that there are certain lower level lexicosyntactic and sentence-parsing mechanisms that operate on the textual data to produce or guide the production of propositions (for further detail, see Kintsch, 1992; Perfetti, 1990; Perfetti & Britt, 1995; Turner, Britton, Andraessen, & McCutchen, 1996). As noted earlier, in the construction-integration view, both the construction and integration processes operate in a connectionist manner. Central to this view is the idea that the knowledge that guides the comprehension system is not outside the text nor does the processing system proceed by generating top-down expectations and hypotheses and checking them against textual information as suggested by schema theory. Rather, knowledge is generated through activation patterns initiated by the textual information and the progressive upgrading of previously established associations in the text. This view of the role of knowledge in comprehension is currently shared by many other computational and memory-based models (e.g., Cook, Halleran, & OBrien, 1998; Gerrig & McKoon, 1998; McKoon, Gerrig, & Greene, 1996), in which knowledge plays its role through a fast-acting passive resonance process (Cook et al., p. 110), rather than through a matching process, as suggested by schema theory. In these models, the information generated from the text is stored in the working memory and functions as a signal in an associative manner to all of the information in long-term memory. The information from the discourse representation and general world knowledge gets activated simultaneously in response to this signal. Connectionist computational models have several characteristics that make them different from other models. In these models, the comprehensionprocessing system is not controlled by knowledge schemata, nor is the inuence of knowledge schemata from higher levels fed back into lower levels of processing (McClelland, 1987). Comprehension proceeds through a constraintsatisfaction mechanism, which includes a collective satisfaction of all sorts
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of constraint, such as syntactic, semantic, rhetorical, and pragmatic (Golden & Rumelhart, 1991; Kintsch, 1988; OBrien, Shank, Myers, & Rayner, 1988; Weaver & Kintsch, 1996). Although the knowledge that guides the processing is primarily text based, the architecture of the system is such that it provides for the inuence of multiple sources of information in constructing meaning representations, with the information received from input further constraining the mechanism. The information-processing system is multilevel; that is, mental representations of texts are made at many different levels ranging from a letter feature level to a word level to a syntactic level, then to thematic and to discourse levels. These levels are activated textually, leading to information built up through reciprocal interactions occurring both within and between levels. Background knowledge inuences are not predictive, but, rather, selective; that is, context exerts its inuence primarily by selecting among alternatives as they are becoming activated bottom-up (McClelland, p. 13). Consequently, textual ambiguities get resolved by selecting from among alternatives that have been all activated before the contextual processes begin. In these models, inferences are made as a result of activations spreading rapidly from one part of the text to another in a context-free and non-problem-solving manner (Kintsch). They are therefore different from the more strategic mechanisms that might operate after comprehension, when the reader is prompted by retrieval tasks, or when difculties arise during comprehension (e.g., Graesser & Bower, 1990; Graesser & Zwaan, 1995; Singer, Graesser, & Trabasso, 1994). Application of the Construction-Integration Model in L2 Reading The construction-integration model can be applied to different areas of L2 reading. The idea of textbase-construction processes and the principles underlying integration processes, particularly when combined with ideas from memory and recall research, may help us understand and explain the effects of many of the knowledge-based processes not explained adequately in the context of schema theory in L2 reading. I will discuss how this framework can also contribute to resolving many of the inconsistencies in the ndings of L2 reading studies on the role of linguistic and background knowledge, particularly those conducted to provide support for schema theory but that yielded ndings inconsistent with schema-theoretic predictions. One of the areas where schema theory has been widely drawn upon in L2 research concerns situations in which researchers have wanted to explain the amply demonstrated comprehension advantage of various top-level features
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such as the main theme or idea in a text or the more interesting and important information in a story. A schema-based explanation of the comprehension advantage of these features suggests that the reader comprehends top-level features better simply as a function of the relevant schema that he or she brings to the task of interpreting the text. This explanation suggests that the relevant schema contains and represents ideas in the mind in a particular order and at an already commensurate level of importance. This preexisting mental representation of ideas then acts as an advance organizer during comprehension and helps the reader recognize, arrange, and interpret the ideas accordingly. The utilization of the same schema during recall allows readers to reconstruct the information encoded in comprehension and helps them to recall these ideas in their respective order or level of importance as well. An alternative explanation, however, suggests that the comprehension accessibility of top-level ideas is related to far more complex cognitive processes, which involve not only the readers previous mental representation of ideas but also the nature of the propositions contained in the text, as well as the way they are encoded and maintained in memory. As noted earlier, a key notion in the construction-integration model is the idea of establishing an initial textbase that, when created successfully, gives rise to a semantically ordered hierarchical structure of information. This hierarchically structured textbase, along with the varied link strengths of its propositions, can then explain the effect of a host of variables, such as referential and co-referential variables, concreteness, abstractness, and the rhetorical and top-level variables of texts (see Freedle, 1997). These effects can be explained in terms of superordinate and subordinate effects in the hierarchy, which suggest that the ideas situated higher in the hierarchy are understood and recalled better than those that are lower. These effects can also be explained in terms of the degree and depth of cognitive processing of higher level ideas. The higher level ideas, due to their overarching connection with various lower level ideas, are more available for processing. Due to their position, they are referred to more during encoding, and hence are called into, and remain in, working memory more often than other ideas (Alba & Hasher, 1983). In other words, they receive increased processing attention and hence more chance of being rehearsed in the working memory. These processes then enhance both the comprehension and recall of the top-level or more important ideas in the text. This assumption is different from that of schema-based explanations, which assume that these advantages are mostly produced as a result of top-down extratextual operations.
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Cross-linguistic research has demonstrated that L2 readers, even when they are very uent bilinguals, are discernibly slower when reading a text in their L2 than in their L1 (e.g., Favreau & Segalowitz, 1982; Mack, 1986; Segalowitz, 1986). It has also been shown that L2 readers are more bound to text or need to repeat reading the same text more often than L1 readers in order to understand it (e.g., Bernhardt, 1987; Bernhardt & Kamil, 1995; Carrell, 1988; Clarke, 1980; Horiba, 1996, 2000). These ndings have often been interpreted by the proponents of schema theory as evidence that L2 readers are weaker in using higher level strategies when reading than are L1 readers. Carrell argued that the most obvious cause of over-reliance on the text in comprehension is the absence of relevant knowledge structures to utilize in top-down processing (p. 103). In this view, skilled L2 readers, who possess the necessary syntactic and semantic knowledge, may still lack adequate top-down strategies to sample the text rapidly or may simply fail to use their conceptual knowledge when reading for comprehension, so they have to slow down and process many small-scale meaning relationships instead. Research evidence, however, has strongly challenged the above speculations. Horiba, van den Broek, and Fletcher (1993) found that L2 readers were quite capable of not only using higher level information (e.g., the causal structure of the text) but using it even more extensively than L1 readers. McLeod and McLaughlin (1986) found that L2 readers were still processing the text in a slow, word-by-word fashion even when higher order knowledge was available and even when they were completely able to use higher level prediction strategies on the basis of relevant knowledge. Comparing the sentence processing strategies of native and L2 skilled and less skilled German readers, Bernhardt (1986) found that it was the less skilled L2 readers rather than skilled readers who, by relying more on the higher order semantic and L1 processing strategies, skipped and utilized textual syntactic features less extensively when processing L2 texts. Studies examining the use of higher order thinking and problemsolving strategies in reading have also reported signicant similarities between rst and second language reading (e.g., Cumming, Rebuffot, & Ledwell, 1989; Sarig, 1987). Based on these ndings, and on the fact that L2 readers, particularly when they are adult readers, bring to the task a wide range of higher level processing skills they have already developed in their L1 (Pienemann, 1998), it is very hard to accept that L2 readers are weaker in their ability in using higher level prediction processes than L1 readers. The difference between L1 and L2 readers, however, may be alternatively explained in terms of their construction processes and of the difference in the efciency with which they can establish the necessary textbase for comprehension.
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This efciency involves a broad range of uent and automatized text-processing skills, including basic lexical and word-recognition processes such as phonological and orthographic processes (Segalowitz, 1986; Segalowitz et al., 1991; syntactic processes (Boland, 1997; Frazier & Clifton, 1996; Hoover & Dwivedi, 1998), sentence-parsing skills (Juffs & Harrington, 1995; Kintsch, 1992; Perfetti & Britt, 1995; Turner et al., 1996), as well as the ability to use knowledge of causal and rhetorical structures in comprehension (Horiba, 1996, 2000). Here a distinction needs to be drawn between having knowledge, including syntactic, lexical, or even pragmatic knowledge, and the ability to utilize that knowledge efciently for comprehension (Eskey & Grabe, 1988; Fender, 2001). In the construction-integration model, readers who are more efcient and faster in the above construction processes are those who take less time to establish the initial textbase for comprehension. It is this efciency that determines the way working memory resources should be allocated during the comprehension process. Skilled readers, who are able to use these processes more uently, need fewer working memory resources to derive propositional meanings in the construction phase and hence are left with more memory resources for higher order comprehension and inferential processes during the integration phase. This may explain why less skilled L2 readers should read slowly or reread the text. Due to less efcient construction processes, these readers working memory resources may be used up in generating the textbase. Consequently, such readers may need to read the text more slowly or may need to reread it so that in the subsequent readings they can have enough working memory resources for the second phase, namely, integrating meanings with prior knowledge and constructing a coherent mental representation of the text. This explanation is in line with Just and Carpenters (1992) recent capacity theory of comprehension, which suggests that in using the limited computational resources available, the readers priority is with the efciency of the lower level processes rather than with that of the higher level ones (cf. Hirsch, 1987). The construction-integration model may also provide a framework within which we can interpret and account for many of the ndings of L2 reading studies on the role of background knowledge, which appeared to produce ndings incompatible with schema-theoretic predictions. Carrell (1983) investigated the role of three important components of background knowledge in L2 reading: text familiarity, context, and transparency, using advanced and highintermediate L2 and native readers. Using similar materials and procedures as in Bransford and Johnsons (1972) study, Carrell dened familiarity as the readers experience with the text content; context as plus/minus a title and a picture page; and transparency as plus/minus concrete content words in the texts.
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Schema theory predicts that when a passage appears within a specic context, it should be understood and recalled better than when it is without a context. In particular, when L2 readers have prior knowledge about a passage they read, they ought to comprehend and recall that passage better than when they do not have as much prior knowledge about that passage. Carrells study, however, provided no positive support for any of the background-knowledge variables tested in the recall performance of the advanced L2 readers. More surprisingly, the unfamiliar passage was recalled better than the familiar passage by both the advanced L2 and L1 native readers. To explain such unexpected ndings, Carrell proposed that schema-based processes were simply not operative in the case of the L2 readers: Neither advanced nor high-intermediate ESL readers appear to utilize context or textual cues (p. 199). Carrell argued that L2 readers do not behave like L1 readers: they may be processing the literal meaning of the text, but they are not making the necessary connections between the text and the appropriate background information (p. 200). However, there are problems with this interpretation of the results. First, topdown or bottom-up processes rarely exist in isolation in reading comprehension in either L1 or L2 reading. Second, in Carrells (1983) study, the unfamiliar text was recalled better than the familiar text by both L1 and L2 readers; thus, the results cannot be simply explained in terms of the difference between L1 and L2 reading, nor can they be explained in terms of the low level of language prociency of the L2 readers because they were highly advanced L2 readers.2 Lee (1986) replicated Carrells (1983) study using the same materials and procedures. In Lees study, the readers were also advanced in their L2 prociency, but they were second language readers of Spanish. However, Lee asked them to recall the passage in their L1 (in Carrells study, the recall had been done in L2) because he thought that the reason Carrell did not nd any role for background-knowledge variables might have been due to the readers inability to do the recall in their L2.3 Lee found a main effect for context. However, he came up with ndings similar to those of Carrell regarding familiar/unfamiliar texts, although in the case of Lees study, the pattern of interactions was more complex. Nevertheless, he still found that his readers recalled the unfamiliar text better than the familiar text under the no-context condition. Using similar materials and procedures, Roller and Matambo (1992) investigated the role of the same background-knowledge variables but with different readers. This time, Roller and Matambo used advanced bilingual readers who read the texts in their L1, Shona, and in their L2, English. Roller and Matambo had predicted that if the language prociency threshold were a factor in determining the use of context, then providing the context for L1 readers would at least improve their
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recall performance. Contrary to this prediction, they found no effect for the role of context, even when the readers were reading in their L1. Moreover, Roller and Matambo found that their readers recalled the unfamiliar text better than the familiar text. What was even more surprising was that the provision of context negatively affected both the native and the L2 readers performance when reading the unfamiliar text. In response to these ndings, Roller and Matambo remarked, it is difcult to explain why this interaction occurred (p. 136). They held, apparently, there may be other factors than familiarity which account for the better recall of the unfamiliar Balloon Serenade passage (p. 135). What is evident here is that the results obtained in the above studies are difcult to interpret in terms of schema-theoretic principles. Thus, they call for alternative explanations, such as a construction-integration view of L2 reading. As discussed earlier, in the construction-integration view, the initial and the critical phase of comprehension is the construction of a textbase, which contains the principal meaning relationships for the text (and is automatic and less affected by the readers prior knowledge). For this process to be successful, what is needed is the presence of adequate textual connections and cues for joining and assembling the propositions and establishing the meaning relationships during encoding (Kintsch, 1988; McNamara & Kintsch, 1996). These connections take place initially through argument overlap and propositional embedding (Kintsch, 1974; Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978), processes whereby concepts are interconnected through arguments they share with either neighboring propositions, higher level propositions, or embedded propositions. It is the quality of the shared arguments and embedded propositions, as well as the strength of their association, that determines the creation of a coherent textbase. If the reading passage lacks these necessary properties, as it did in the case of Bransford and Johnsons (1972) passages, these connections will not be appropriately established and the construction process will be seriously impaired, resulting in a poor and incoherent textbase. The lack of these connections would greatly tax the working memory resources during encoding, causing the unconnected propositions to remain longer in the working memory before any meaning relationships could be established (Gibson, 1998), which would then require either more processing time and resources or lead to fewer propositions being generated during the construction process and then assembled and interpreted during the integration process. In the case of L2 readers, there are additional factors that can make the construction-integration processes more complicated than in the case of L1 readers. A number of studies examining and comparing text-processing mechanisms in L1 and L2 reading comprehension have shown that skilled L2 readers
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use text-processing procedures similar to those used by native L1 readers, particularly in terms of using syntactic and semantic information (see Fender, 2001; Fitzgerald, 1995, for a review). Both L1 and L2 readers initially parse sentences into smaller units such as words, phrases, and clauses, based on the lexical and syntactic subcategorization information available, and then incrementally integrate them into the larger discourse context (Frenck-Mestre & Pynte, 1997; Hoover & Dwivedi, 1998; Juffs & Harrington, 1995). This integration process has been shown to be heavily inuenced by both lower level textual as well as general higher level semantic/contextual and pragmatic information. However, research has also shown that important text-processing differences exist among L1 and L2 readers (Bernhardt, 1986; Cziko, 1980; Frenck-Mestre & Pynte; Oller & Tullius, 1973). L2 readers are more constrained than L1 readers in several important ways. First, L2 readers in general possess to a much lesser degree that kind of socioculturally appropriate background knowledge shared between L1 writers and readers (Bernhardt, 1991). This then would push them to rely more on the textual linguistic data and their L2 linguistic competence to extract meaning from text than L1 readers do (Bossers, 1991; Horiba, 1996; Taillefer, 1996; Zwaan & Brown, 1996). Both Horriba (1996, 2000) and Taillefer found that L2 readers drew heavily on their linguistic ability when they were reading various L2 texts. Taillefer found that L2 readers used this knowledge not only when they were reading L2 texts for meaningful details but also when they were reading L2 texts to do tasks as simple as scanning for specic information. Taillefer also found that as the reading task became more cognitively complex, the role of linguistic ability became more paramount (see also Bossers, 1992; Cummins, 1980; Cziko). More importantly, Taillefer found that as the L2 learner became more linguistically procient, other variables, such as the use of L1 higher level reading strategies, did not gain more momentum than L2 language prociency in extracting meaning from text. In other words, as the learners in these studies became more procient, reliance on textual and linguistic processes did not decrease (cf. Alderson, 1984). Furthermore, L2 readers are by denition less uent than their L1 counterparts in terms of their lower level linguistic processing skills, including the efciency of lexical and syntactic processes (Bates & MacWhinney, 1989; Potter, So, von Eckardt, & Feldman, 1984). This limited efciency has been shown to exist even when L2 readers are highly advanced bilingual readers (Favreau & Segalowitz, 1982; Mack, 1986; Segalowitz, 1986; Segalowitz et al., 1991). Such constraints will then negatively affect L2 readers efciency in decoding the linguistic data for creating the appropriate textbase. This limited efciency will cause a delay in the higher level interpretation processes
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involved in comprehending connected L2 text, hence affecting integration processes considerably (Haynes & Carr, 1990; Koda, 1994; Zwaan & Brown, 1996). Importantly, inefcient syntactic and lexical processes will exhaust computational resources by placing a greater burden on the readers working memory capacity, which would then decrease comprehension performance (Just & Carpenter, 1992). These differences between L1 and L2 readers, combined with the interactive effects of many other variables, such as those deriving from differences in L1 processing strategies (Bates & MacWhinney, 1981; Durgunoglu & Hancin, 1992; Koda, 1990, 1993; MacWhinney, 1992; Sasaki, 1994), can then explain why L2 readers in the schema-based studies reviewed above could not comprehend and recall the text as successfully as L1 readers even when they were advanced L2 readers and even when the text was highly familiar. Another unexpected nding of the schema-based studies reviewed earlier was that readers were able to recall the unfamiliar Balloon Serenade passage better than the familiar Washing Clothes passage under a no-context condition. The difference between the effectiveness of the textbase and the relative ease with which the readers were able to construct a propositional content when reading the Balloon Serenade passage (the unfamiliar passage) as opposed to when reading the Washing Clothes passage (the familiar passage) may help explain why this happened. As described by Roller and Matambo (1992), the Balloon Serenade passage included more concrete and specic nominal references than the Washing Clothes passage did. The more concrete and specic nature of the unfamiliar passage could have allowed the readers to construct a more concrete, explicitand hence high-qualitytextbase by activating stronger nodes and links in the working memory during the construction process and providing the reader with more concrete information to work with during the integration phase (Kintsch, 1992; Kintsch & Welsch, 1991; Tapiero & Otero, 1999). Moreover, in these studies not only did the researchers use recall protocols to test the readers reading performance, but they also assessed the recall protocols in terms of the accuracy of the propositional meanings contained in the text. By doing so, they were possibly testing how well the readers had understood the text at the textbase level rather than at the situation-model level (Brown, 1998). In view of this explanation, it is possible that, if other methods of testing reading comprehension had been used (see Riley & Lee, 1996) or if recall protocols had been assessed in terms of other criteria, such as the readers elaborations and inferences about the text (see Moravcsik & Kintsch, 1993; Tapiero & Otero; Tardieu, Ehrlich, & Gyselinck, 1992), the results could have been different. In addition to the studies reviewed above, there are other L2 studies that provide evidence for the validity of the application of the construction-integration
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model in L2 reading. Evidence for the idea that comprehension and recall depend on the efcacy of the textbase and the encoding of the properties of texts can be seen in several recent studies (Carrell, 1992; Horiba, 1996; Horiba et al., 1993; Taillefer, 1996; Walters & Wolf, 1986; Zwaan & Brown, 1996). Horiba et al., for example, investigated how structural properties of texts affect readers mental representations of texts. Analyzing the reading-recall protocols of L2 readers in terms of two idea categoriesstructure-preserving ideas (dened as information that also carries the structural property of the original text) and meaning-preserving ideas (dened as the core information remembered) these researchers found that not only did L2 readers remember the structurepreserving ideas but also the number of structure-preserving ideas in their recall was much higher than that of meaning-preserving ideas. What these ndings seem to imply is that, while reading, the L2 readers encoded and stored the rhetorical information as part of their mental representation of the text. These ndings are not consistent with the idea that what readers process and represent in memory are only the semantics of the text. On the other hand, they are consistent with, and provide support for, the idea that comprehension is a process of creating a textbase (that includes the textual and rhetorical features) as well as a knowledge-based interpretation of the text. Carrell (1992) investigated the effect of implicit and explicit awareness of text structure on the written recall protocols of high-intermediate English as a second language (ESL) learners. Carrell found a signicant effect of implicit awareness of text structure on the readers recall performance; however, she did not nd a similar effect for explicit awareness of text structure. What this nding suggests is (a) that readers make signicant use of their knowledge of text structure in organizing their recall protocols but (b) that they process and encode such textual features without necessarily being aware of them. This nding is not consistent with a problem-solving view of the role of knowledge in comprehension, but it is consistent with a distinction between implicit and explicit textbase processes (Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978) and the idea that the principles underlying explicit textual knowledge are not identical to those underlying actual text representation processes. Other evidence for a construction-integration view comes from studies that have shown that linguistic prociency and prior knowledge make important but distinct contributions to reading comprehension (e.g., Barry & Lazarte, 1995, 1998; Chen & Donin, 1997; Hammadou, 1991). Barry and Lazarte (1995), for example, found that while the linguistic complexity of L2 Spanish texts had a signicant effect on the proportion of core propositions recalled, prior
Language Learning 57:Suppl. 1, June 2007, pp. 79113
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knowledge of the topic did not. In a follow-up study, Barry and Lazarte (1998) found that prior knowledge of topics had a signicant effect on the generation of elaborations and inferences (see also Cumming et al., 1989; Zwaan & Brown, 1996). Investigating the effects of linguistic knowledge and domain-specic knowledge on Chinese subjects reading of texts in both L1 and L2, Chen and Donin found that linguistic knowledge had a consistent effect on lower level lexical and syntactic processing, but that domain-specic knowledge had a strong effect on higher level semantic and conceptual information but a minor effect on lower level processes. As Chen and Donin also pointed out, it appears that these ndings cannot be explained by reading models in which lower level processes are instantaneously affected by higher level processes. But a possible explanation may come from models in which text comprehension involves different levels of representation, some generated from the linguistic input and the learners processing of the lower level lexical and syntactic content of the text (e.g., the textbase) and others from higher level processes of integrating that content with the readers conceptual and prior knowledge (e.g., situationmodel). Finally, it is suggested that the above ndings have at least three implications for L2 reading research and theory: (a) It is necessary to distinguish between different levels of meaning representations in L2 reading comprehension and study these levels with reference to the different procedures involved in generating them; (b) different knowledge sources, linguistic or conceptual, may involve different processes, which may have qualitatively differential effects on different levels of representation in text comprehension; and (c) knowledge in terms of explicit awareness, while helpful, may not be required for text processing. These are the issues that should be considered when investigating the role of different knowledge-based processes in L2 reading comprehension. In this context, a construction-integration view of L2 reading may provide insights into understanding these processes and explaining the possible independent and interactive effects of the various processes involved in the different levels of representation in L2 reading comprehension. Conclusion No one doubts that L2 reading comprehension is a function of the use of multiple sources of knowledge, including background knowledge. In this sense, schema theory has led to useful insights by bringing to our attention the role of this knowledge. However, it seems that knowledge-based processes and the
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mechanisms underlying their representation and use in memory and comprehension are too complex to be accounted for by a simple expectation-driven conception of the role of knowledge. A considerable body of L2 research exists on the role of various text-based and knowledge-based processes in L2 reading comprehension. However, this research has mostly focused on demonstrating the importance of these processes rather than how they operate. We cannot understand the nature of such processes unless we do more principled and theory-based research that attempts to explore the complex mechanisms underlying such processes. In seems that computational and memory-based models, such as construction-integration models, provide a framework within which we can explore the role of many of these processes in L2 reading comprehension. These models provide a system of rules and mechanisms for how texts are processed, understood, and recalled. Thus, by applying these models to L2 reading, we may be able to study and understand in greater depth how L2 readers comprehend and recall L2 texts. Moreover, these theories assume that textual information functions like other kinds of input to memory, providing an important link between the theories of discourse comprehension and other theories of memory.
Revised version accepted 23 November 2001
Notes
1 Propositions are the smallest idea units that can be judged to be true or false. For example, the sentence, Jack sent a thank-you letter to Mary contains three propositions: (1) Jack sent a letter, (2) the letter was for Mary, and (3) the letter was a thank-you letter. 2 See Hudson (1982), who found a greater effect of background knowledge for beginning and intermediate L2 readers than for advanced L2 readers. 3 Chen and Donin (1997) found no signicant effect for language of recall, whether L1 or L2, on remembering the semantic content of text. In their study, Chinese readers did not recall more information from the text when they were doing the recall in their L1 (Chinese) compared to when they were doing so in their L2 (English). This lack of difference, the researchers suggested, could be partly attributable to the greater processing demand involved in using two typologically different languages such as Chinese and English in reading and recall and to the fact that going back and forth from two distant languages might not be easier than using one language in both reading and recall. Indeed, future research comparing typologically similar and different languages in both reading and recall is needed to further investigate the effect of language of recall.
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Language Learning

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

Language Learning 57:Suppl. 1, June 2007, pp. 79113

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

Language Learning 57:Suppl. 1, June 2007, pp. 79113

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

Language Learning 57:Suppl. 1, June 2007, pp. 79113

A Need for Alternative Perspectives

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