The Effects of Cultural Schemata on Short Story Interpretation

The present study explored whether the familiarity with different contexts and cultural elements found in short stories could influence the students to write story endings that draw on their pre-acquired cultural knowledge. Two short stories were given to the students. "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson (1988) and "One of These Days" by Gabriel Marquez (1962). The story endings were omitted for research purposes in order to discover if the students will write the endings from their cultural experience.