Schema patterns in efla case study

Resumen

Data and information processing are important to put order in the world around us. However, it is information and experience together that act as vital building blocks of cognition for knowledge acquisition, management, and transfer. From an educational perspective, schema theory through its recognition of patterns and relational links fosters enhanced knowledge management and acquisition. This dissertation, based on Sandra P. Marshall's Schemas in Problem Solving (1995), adapts her taxonomy, now denominated schema learning, to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in a Spanish curricular setting. In this context, schema learning encompasses past, present, and future experience embracing information processing to promote declarative, procedural, and structural knowledge as well as higher-order cognition under tasks, strategies, problem solving, and computer skills. The use of tasks as a coherent contextualized curriculum framework by means of schema learning and the above mentioned skills aid as a unique synergetic environment to promote cohesive and coherent discourse by integrating the language arts through student and teacher self-efficacy, involvement, and interaction. In this light, students as problem solvers by means of strategies and tasks become proactive rather than passive recepients and onlookers in their own and each other's learning processes leading to heightened focus of attention, metacognition, and motivation. This case study reviewed four specfic aspects in EFL: (i) if schema theory could enhance learner-knowledge levels through testing and whether it could elevate students' previous test scores; (ii) if different learners of different levels could work together and make progress; (iii) if schema theory provided an appropriate technique for overall top-down understanding of linguistic data as well as gradual scaffolding of bottom-up detailed application of specific elements, and finally the cohesion and coherence of structural knowledge in order to associate and make relationships with other linguistic information in discourse, and; (iv) if schema theory fostered English speaking in the Spanish EFL classroom. This dissertation provided research data in a horizontal and vertical manner by means of introduction, pre, mid, and post-schema learning development as well as three types of research support: (i) quantitative data in reference to pre, mid, and post- level examination and transfer accomplished by a reference and a non-reference group; (ii) qualitative information by means of interviews, questionnaires, and learning journals, and; (iii) *quaductative assessment and evaluation through the production of Error and Needs Analyses, schema-learning tools, personal opinions, and a schema exercise book created by the reference group. Furthermore, schema learning as developed in this dissertation acts as a pre-organizer of grammatical information which leads to higher-order understanding of discourse structures providing a sense of texture for the application of previous knowledge to novel instances of grammatical data. Moreover, the overall framework contained herein provides continuous improvement foresight, insight, and hindsight endeavors for action research. Finally, this dissertation makes proposals for future application and implementation of schema learning in EFL under a Spanish curricular setting. The information comprised within supports schema learning as a flexible instrument and an extremely effective and efficient acquisition tool not only for EFL and different learner/learning types but also for learning and training across the curriculum for in-depth sociocultural awareness and integration.