Inadequacy of Hatch's Model of Formal Schema for American Short Stories

Reading specialists have already argued for the existence of content and formal schemata. Anderson (1980) defines schemata as ‘..., complex, units of knowledge that organize much of what we know about general categories of objects, classes of events,…’. Research has shown that stories have schematic structures and that readers employ them to both facilitate and enhance comprehension and recall. The most recent story schema model, proposed by Hatch (1992), includes ‘an abstract, an orientation, astory line, a resolution, and a coda’. In order to test the adequacy of Hatch''s model, seven popular American short stories were selected and the formal schema ofeach story was represented in the form of a tree diagram. Results demonstrated the inadequacy of Hatch''s Model for the natural, relatively long, short stories. As a result, two more elements were added to complement the model.