Prof: Rosa Ponce De Avila

SOCIO-CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON READING COMPREHENSION Early theorists and teachers believed that an individual who reads a story or a text presupposes culture influence over the process of reading comprehension. According to schemata theory, from cognitive psychologists, knowledge is stored in schematic structures which are organized representations of owns background experiences. These structures or schemata, which are influenced by society and its culture in which one lives, provide an interpretative framework which the reader may use when reading. This process is an active one, whether a reader may use their background knowledge, the situational context or the clues provided by the author o the text. Therefore, a passage dealing with a culturally familiar topic will be easier to comprehend than a culturally unfamiliar one, since the reader may activate and make use of the relevant schemata, experience and social construction of the language to facilitate comprehension. But, what readers actually do when reading? This essay was written in an effort to show a brief theoretical perspective of the socio-cultural structures integration in the act of reading. In order to understand the relationship between socio-cultural structure and reading, we must first explain what is meant by culture. For Simmel, culture referrers to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history". Tylor, from Anthropology and previous to Simmel, described Culture as civilization, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." If we review the two definitions, society appears like a common factor or element. This means that our social life has an important role in the way we acquire knowledge, the way we believe in science, the manner we behave next to norms, in the practice of interaction with the world and other persons. The result is a connection between actions and meaningful experiences for individuals, persons or students. To move any further, it is necessary to clarify the relationship linking the definition of sociocultural structures and socio-cultural theory from Viygotsky. Socio-cultural theory argues that human mental functioning is fundamentally a mediated process that is organized by cultural artifacts, activities, and concepts. Within this framework, humans are understood to use existing cultural artifacts and to create new ones that allow them to regulate their biological and behavioral activity.

Prof: Rosa Ponce De Avila

Sociologists, almost in general tend to visualize culture as something soft or mental, therefore as derived from social relation. While structure is thought of something hard or material, so is primary. The notion of structure is powerful and does denominate social relations: that is, the tendency of relating patterns to be reproduced, even when actors students- engaged in the association are unaware of the patterns or do not desire their reproduction. Then, culture is the result of the social activity and structure is put into practice in the production and reproduction of social life. To set the relation, Vigotskys mental functioning theory is mediated and organized by cultural artifacts, which at the same time have been structured by any other aspect of the social existence, whether it is class that structures politics, gender that structures employment opportunities, rhetorical conventions that structure texts and utterances or modes of production of social formations, persons that influences learning. Structure operates as a figurative device, identifying some part of a complex social reality as explaining the whole. Giddens, a British sociologist, has insisted on the dual function of structures. By this, he means that they are the medium and the result of practices which constitute social systems. Structures shape peoples practices, but it is also peoples practices that constitute and reproduce structures, which means structuration is a process and not a stable state in society. Social systems are social practices that link persons across time and space. It means societies or groups like neighborhood, school, church, community, and nation. They do not exist apart from their social practices reproducing their structure. The structure does not pattern by itself, but by principles, which virtually live through memory or history as knowledge and action put into practice. But what do these structures consist? According to Giddens, they consist of rules and resources. And what is the difference between structure and practice? The difference is that structures are abstract rules that make possible the principles which rule anyone practices. And practice, is the actual production of actions using those structures. The variation of schemas makes possible their application in an extended context of interaction. Such as; rules of etiquette, or aesthetic norms, a recipe of group actions like democratic vote, a set of equivalence between gender, nature and culture, private and public, or the composition of human being as body and soul, which can be used not only in the situation where you first learned but it could be applied. Besides structure and organization, language use is the primary means of mediation. Practically speaking, those process of structuration and development takes place through

Prof: Rosa Ponce De Avila

participation in cultural, linguistic and historically formed settings such as family life, group of interaction, institutional a contexts like schooling, university, organized sports activities, work places, to name a few. Language is the most omnipresent and powerful artifact that humans posses to mediate their connection to the world, to each other and to the world. Language impregnates humans the capacity to free themselves from the circumstances of their immediate environment and enables us to talk and think about entities and events that are displaced in both time and space, including those events and entities that do not yet exist in the real world. To summarize the ideas, human knowledge, behaviors, actions and practices, including the reading process, are formed and structured through schemas in the play of interrelationational practices between students, mind, and the socio-cultural experience. As we said previously, this is a recursive process where language among other cultural artifacts from society constructs the significance of the experience, recreating natural practices within the interplay of reading. So far, reading comprehension involves background knowledge which goes far beyond linguistic knowledge and what the student brings to the reading comprehension process is more important than what the teacher can bring to class. As to illustrate the influence of background knowledge as in structures and practices in reading, lets consider the following ideas: The process of interpretation is always guided by a previous existing schema which we compare as compatible with the incoming information while reading, resulting in a specific modes of organizing information consciously. The basic point is that of much of the meaning understood from a text is not actually in the text, per se, it is in the reader, in the background knowledge, or the schematic knowledge of the reader. ( in the student , the actor, and the socio-cultural structure he carries) The background knowledge is not only to recognize de rhetorical organization, but about the content area of a text. (structures are not only rhetorical, linguistic, but as content so as we put them into play) The schema is culturally specific, and is not part of a particularly cultural readers background. The closer, the knowledge of the culture you have the easier to understand the reading. (As practices built us in identities, in meaningful subjects or objects, we may see ourselves reflected into those practices, we will recognize in them as normal behaviors)

Prof: Rosa Ponce De Avila

The effect of having a discipline specific knowledge is better to be recalled as familiar topic. (Having had the experience, means familiar action, practices, accepted norms as part of process of reading or being a person)

Knowing a simple schema of story structure, means a constant knowledge comprehension from a text, but changing the rhetorical structure in its temporal sequences, that means time, affects reading comprehension. (As persons, we live in a predictable world of sequences, giving us a stable and harmonic life, behavior, and practice in society. When the rhetoric structure is varied, we assume the world is incomprehensible.)

Cultural background knowledge will be different applied in reading, according to their different native-language/native-culture background. (Structures will pattern differently according to the social-cultural context)

Last but not least, the reader or the student. Language knowledge is relevant to activate schemata or structures. Through language, we as persons and individuals construct the sense of being part of the world of reading, by seeing ourselves in the object we wish to be. Subjectibly, we should identify with the process of reading through time and space, that is, from the beginning of our childhood with family members, at school, or any social activity which will promote reading, up to the age we become, identified with reading as part of our life, even further than the university level. So, as when we become independent, free or mature while reading.