Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | The article describes an experiment designed to enhance the viewing comprehension of a group of advanced level ESL learners by means of the prior activation of text-relevant schemata. The subject population, Belgian university students of business administration, were divided into three groups, two receiving an experimental treat ment geared to the activation of either formal or content schemata, and a control group which received no pre-viewing treatment. The target video sequence was an off-air recording on an economic topic. The formal treatment involved the presentation of the problem- solution model (Hoey, 1979) and a learner-based practice activity in the use of this model on a topic other than that of the target se quence. The content treatment involved provision of information on culturally-specific referential elements occurring in the target se quence and a learner-based activity on the general topic of the se quence, privatisation. Experimental effect was monitored by means of summary writing and a set of comprehension questions, the latter being given directly after viewing and again a week later to monitor for recall. Both pre-viewing groups showed significant levels of com prehension facilitation on all monitoring measures. Levels of im provement attained by the formal schemata group were higher than those of the content schemata group, although the difference was less marked on the recall than on the immediate measures. © 1991, Sage Publications. All rights reserved. |
