How to put student 's cultural knowledge and school knowledge into the context in the classroom. Anne, a 15-year-old Vietnamese American student gazed outside the window, the teacher squeaked behind. Her idea was focusing on lunch and her friends and family. At a deeper level, her idea is about friendship, loyalty, intimacy, and how children gain position and acceptance in school social structure. When the teacher announced that "Information will be the subject of the test", Ann's attention was returned to the classroom.
In the context of school, background knowledge can be defined as knowledge the student has. It is formal learning in the classroom or informal learning through life experience. In the academic sense, background knowledge also includes content knowledge, academic terms and vocabulary necessary to understand content information. Prior knowledge is also a term used to define background knowledge. Some people distinguish these two as a means for students to share their experiences in their lives and as knowledge and language necessary to successfully learn content topics. Regardless of the terms used, it is important to distinguish between the two concepts and consider when to use student experience to evaluate knowledge about specific topics.
In English learners and students with different cultures and educational backgrounds, the type and amount of background knowledge related to a particular topic may be different. When students arrive in the classroom, they can receive advanced academic education in their mother tongue, but they do not express what they know in English. Other students may have ceased formal schooling, or their background knowledge may not match the view presented in the class. This poses special challenges and shows the importance of evaluating students' knowledge and skills on what you are trying to learn.
When a student enters a second language class, they have different levels of experience and language knowledge; some students may not have knowledge, some knowledge may exist. What complicates the teacher is that all of these students may belong to the same class. As a teacher, not only to understand that each student has their own background knowledge but also to cooperate with them in order to become familiar with the background and to guide all students to achieve greater success in the target language Also important. . In this section, we will explain examples of how to learn the student's biography, how to decide the career, and how to gather information.