other study materials, in contrast with reading which is for pleasure or
relaxation.content scheman
in theories of reading comprehension, a distiction is sometimes made
between two kinds of schemathat people make use of in understand-
ing texts. Content schema refers to background knowledge about
the content of a text, i.e. depending on whether it is a text about an
earthquake, the economy, French art or cooking. This type of schematic
knowedge is contrasted with formal schema, i.e. knowledge about the
formal, rhetorical, organizational structure of diferent kinds of texts, such
as whether the text is a simple story, a scientific text, a news report, etc.
Knowledge of both types of schemata influence how a reader understands
a text.
see schema theory
content validityn
(in testing) a type of validitythat is based on the extent to which a test
adequately and sufficiently measures the particular skills or behaviour it
sets out to measure. For example, a test of pronunciation skills in a
language would have low content validity if it tested only some of the skills
that are required for accurate pronunciation, such as a test that tested
the ability to pronounce isolated sounds, but not stress, intonation, or
the pronunciation of sounds within words. Content validity is of particular
importance in criterion-referenced tests, where the test content must
represent the content of what has been taught in a course.
content wordn
words can be divided into two classes: content wordsand function words.
Content words are words which refer to a thing, quality, state, or action
and which have meaning (lexical meaning) when the words are used alone.
Content words are mainly nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, e.g. book,
run, musical, quickly.
Function words are words which have little meaning on their own, but
which show grammatical relationships in and between sentences (gram-
matical meaning). Conjunctions, prepositions, articles, e.g. and, to, the, are
function words.
Function words are also called form words, empty words, functors, gram-
matical words, structural words, structure words. Content words are also
called full words, lexical words.
see also word class
content schema