THE ROLE OF CULTURAL SCHEMA IN STUDENTS’ READING COMPREHENSION IN ESL CONTEXT

Abstract

The present study is designed to investigate the role of cultural schema in ESL context at Higher Secondary level in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It aims to investigate students’ comprehension of a short story The Blanket by Floyed Dellin their textbooks. The investigation is however exclusive of content and language schemata. To examine students’ reading comprehension qualitatively, this study uses the tool of ‘content familiarity questionnaire’ for primary data collection from a sample of 200 participants selected via convenient sampling technique. Analysis includes schemata identification of culturally unfamiliar context, norms, rituals and customs by the students while interpreting the selected lesson. Findings reveal a significant mismatch and misperception between students derived understanding and encoded text from less comprehension to the degree of total miscomprehension. It was found that students either wrongly identified the foreign culture phenomena with their own culture, or their constructed schemata neither match the target nor their cultural schema. Thus, the study stands beneficial to ESL students’ reading skill as it draws attention to the development of cultural schema and suggests means of improving students’ reading comprehension of such lessons in ESL context.