Many language students face difficulties while attempting to comprehend a written text in the foreign language. So how can teachers prepare students so that the reading and listening materials become more comprehensible to them? Educators such as Ausubel believed that learning must be meaningful to be effective and permanent. This means that it should be related to what students already know. Ausubel also spoke about the importance of using advance organizers to activate students' prior knowledge. This will also facilitate retention of new material. Three kinds of knowledge are activated in the second language comprehension process. They are knowledge of linguistic information, knowledge of the world and knowledge of discourse structure.
Another important point is that the teacher should be aware that every person has a different schema for every situation or event. Rumelhart defines schema as: an abstract representation of a generic concept for an object, event, or situation. When trying to comprehend a message, people instantiate a particular form of a schema. If misunderstanding occurs, then the wrong schema has been activated. Being aware of this helps reduce ambiguity in classes because the teacher will be aware that misunderstandings occur not only due to linguistic aspects, but also misreadings of the schema.
"Each learner builds and adds to his understandings according to his or her own knowledge, thoughts, ideas, perceptions, experiences, values, and beliefs. If new information does not connect to existing knowledge, the brain will not accept it." (12 things a teacher must know about learning)
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