Readers, Texts, and Second Languages: The Interactive Processes

Abstract

amounts to an interdisciplinary revolution.I Viewed in the past as either a top-down or bottom-up process, we now think reading comprehension results from interactive variables that operate simultaneously rather than sequentially (Rumelhart 172; Schank). Research into one of these variables, schematizing (the reader's prior knowledge applied to text assertions), suggests that, in L2 as in L1, what is understood depends on the rather than on the text (Steffensen et al.; Bernhardt 26). In literary criticism, response theorists support this view with the claim that meaning has no effective existence outside of its realization in the mind of the reader (Tompkins: ix). Increasingly, many researchers in many fields find that the text cannot be described