Promoting Schematic Knowledge To English Teachers of Secondary School Levels

Abstract

To be successful in conducting the English teaching and learning process, English teachers of secondary schools are demanded to gain two types of knowledge sufficiently. They are systemic knowledge and schematic knowledge or background knowledge. The former is concerned with the knowledge of the language that embodies the phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic knowledge. The latter deals with non-linguistic knowledge, which consists of four issues, namely the general knowledge, topic/thematic knowledge, genre knowledge, and social-cultural knowledge. Both types of knowledge should be equally taken into account to establish them to be competence English teachers. Also, the types of knowledge are of great importance for English teachers of secondary school level to deal with the process of English language teaching and learning in order to facilitate their students to maximally acquire the target language (English). However, it is evident that most English teachers of secondary schools tend to give an emphasis on the systematic knowledge rather than the schematic knowledge when they are involved in English language teaching and learning. This may lead to the failure of the acquisition of the macro-language skills, reading in particular due to misinterpretation or miscomprehension of the use of the target language. To cope with such a problem, this paper deals with promoting the schematic knowledge to English teachers of secondary school levels. It aims at providing English teachers of secondary school levels with comprehensive insights of schematic knowledge which is fruitful to acquire the target language.