Exploring the Role of Cultural Schemata in Bridging the Gap between People

This study aims to investigate the hypothesis proposing "Cultural schemata to bridge the gap between the people of different origins". The researchers have adopted the quantitative and qualitative methods as well as the questionnaire (50) and interview (10) as the tools for collecting data relevant to the study. It is an attempt to bring to the light the importance of cultural schemata in bridging the gap between the people. The sample of this study is comprised of (50) + (10) people who did not share the same cultural background and they were descended from different cultural background. The marks obtained from the questionnaire and interviews were compared. The results have revealed that the cultural schemata play a great role in bridging the gap between the people positively. Accordingly, the results have shown that there are strong equivalences among the people who descended from different cultural background. As a result, more space should be given to those people to bridge the gap between themselves and others in terms of social interaction, transferring the meaning of lexicons of concerned people’s language, strengthening the relationship and knowledge of the world.

THE EFFECTS OF CULTURAL BASED TEXT TYPES IN READING COMPREHENSION

Background and Purpose: This research aims to investigate the effects of Malay, Chinese and Indian cultural based text types on reading comprehension. Methodology: An exploratory case study research design was employed to explore the use of cultural schemata in reading comprehension of three types of cultural text format: narrative, descriptive and info graphic. The purposive sampling method was used to select participants based on their ethnicities, English proficiency level, and their scores in prior knowledge assessment and retelling assessment. A total of 15 students, between 11- 12 years old, were selected. The retelling technique in written form, a comprehension test and an interview protocol were used as instruments to gather data in this research and they were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Findings: The overall findings have shown that the comprehension test scores showed better performance in info graphic texts. However, the retelling assessment scores showed better performance in retelling narrative texts. The participants’ main reason for text incomprehensibility was due to the unfamiliar cultural content regardless of the types of text format . Contributions: This study aids teachers in their pedagogical decisions when selecting and adapting cultural texts for reading comprehension Keywords: Comprehension test, cultural schemata, reading comprehension, retelling assessment, text types. Cite as: Thirunavukarasu, I., & Raja Harun, R. N. S. (2021). The effects of cultural based text types in reading comprehension. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 6(1), 1-23. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss1pp1-23

How street-level bureaucrats use conceptual systems to categorise clients

This study analyses how street-level bureaucrats’ categorisation of citizens is embedded within conceptual systems. We observe the process of categorisation as embedded in cultural schemata used by street-level bureaucrats. We provided vignettes to 40 teachers in São Paulo public schools to observe how they categorise similar behaviours of students within different social contexts. We then determined if there were differences in the systems of categories created and actions proposed to deal with similar behaviours in different contexts. The data showed that, depending on the way in which context triggered the teachers’ system of categorisation, distinct actions were proposed. These different actions produced different types of deservingness that, in the case analysed here, are related to actions inside or outside the school. These findings have important implications for policymakers in ensuring more equal access to services for students requiring additional support in the classroom.

Saudi Students’ Perceptions of Schemata and Poetry Comprehension

In teaching poetry, one of the first problems to be addressed is the lack of appropriate schemata when studying English and American poetic texts. The current study inquires about the students’ perception regarding how Saudi students perceive the relationship between the lack of appropriate schemata and the comprehension of English and American poetry to explain how they read and interpret poems in English and how they respond to the culturally loaded texts by writers with different cultural schemata to provide a greater understanding of the challenges they face in the poetry classroom. The study also examines students’ openness to schema activation techniques within the poetry classroom. A qualitative and quantitative research study has been conducted in three undergraduate classrooms at King Saud University. The research included open questions and questionnaire data obtained over a one year period (2018-2019) from 51 students. The results show that Saudi students’ are very much aware of the problematic issues in their reading and believe social and cultural ideologies have a significant influence on comprehension based on their individual experience. Only a third of the respondents do not find social and cultural ideologies and references to be problematic. Furthermore, 49% of the respondents feel that having a different background affects their ability to identify with the poems. The study also showed that students are open to incorporating schema activating techniques to improve their comprehension of English and American poetry.

The Effect of Cultural Schemata on EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension Ability

This research study aims to investigate the impact of cultural schemata on the process of reading culturally- loaded texts, and whether the use of pre-reading activities recompenses for the absence of cultural familiarity. In this regard, EFL readers bring to the text a wide range of experiences. Consequently, such diversity of prior knowledge influences their perception and interpretation of foreign language texts. Here comes the role of cultural schemata, which is indeed a very critical role. How do cultural differences in background knowledge influence student’s reading comprehension ability? To recognize the effect of cultural schemata on comprehension, it is essential first to understand the significant role that background knowledge plays in the reading process. Therefore, to carry out this research, a selection of reading comprehension tests was assigned for an experimental and a control group in a quasi-classroom experiment of first-year EFL students at Ibn Khaldoun University (Tiaret). While the experimental group was provided with pre-reading tasks to activate their background knowledge, the control group received no treatment. We collected data from 40 participants, and the results show that many EFL learners belonging to the control group display a lack of cultural schemata since their prior-knowledge is not activated, which may well impact negatively on their reading practices. By contrast, participants of the experimental group performed better in the comprehension test than those in the control group. In brief, there is a correlation between activating students’ background knowledge and the increase of reading comprehension ability.

Machine learning as a model for cultural learning: Teaching an algorithm what it means to be fat

As we navigate our cultural environment, we learn cultural biases, like those around gender, social class, health, and body weight. It is unclear, however, exactly how public culture becomes private culture. In this paper, we provide a theoretical account of such cultural learning. We propose that neural word embeddings provide a parsimonious and cognitively plausible model of the representations learned from natural language. Using neural word embeddings, we extract cultural schemata about body weight from New York Times articles. We identify several cultural schemata that link obesity to gender, immorality, poor health, and low socioeconomic class. Such schemata may be subtly but pervasively activated in public culture; thus, language can chronically reproduce biases. Our findings reinforce ongoing concerns that machine learning can also encode, and reproduce, harmful human biases.

The language of culture and the culture of language

The paper deals with the close connection between culture, language and the process of conceptualisation. Cultural literacy leads to a better understanding of the reality of a cultural community and the language which carries cultural information in the form of cultural conceptualisations. We demonstrate their manifestation using the examples of cultural schemata, categories, metaphors and precedential phenomena. They prove different perceptions of the world based on the specific experience of a cultural community. These differences in the understanding of the reality induced by cultural filters often cause difficulties in intercultural communication. Therefore, while teaching languages, it is important to provide enough space for the topic of culture through developing cultural literacy.