Teacher Support Materials in the Treatment of Cultural Elements for the Malaysian Class Reader Program

Abstract

Researchers involved in cross-cultural experiments have found that people from different cultures respond differently to culturally sensitive materials. Zawiah Yahya (1991) explains that this is because of "differences in the cultural schemata that a reader brings to the text."

Cultural Schema Theory proposes that a 'schema' or 'frame' is the reader's organised knowledge of the world that provides the basis for comprehending, learning and remembering ideas in a story. The schema theory assumes that the text by itself only provides 'directions' for the reader to construct meaning. But these directions heavily rely upon a framework of knowledge "acquired prior to reading". The reader has to 'fill out' a skeleton in the process of meaning production. The 'fillers' (Zawiah Yahya, 1991) are within the reader, not the text. Readers who bring in different schemata would give different interpretations to the same text: