A Study On The Application Of Cultural Schema Theory To English Reading Teaching In Junior High School

English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2011)highlights that English courses should cultivate students’ core competencies for English education.It also puts forward specific requirements for junior high school students’ cultural knowledge and reading ability.Reading plays a more important role in English teaching.From the analysis of the current situation of English reading teaching in junior high schools,it is found that one of the important factors affecting students’ reading comprehension is cultural background.However,as a result of the pressure of exams,most teachers only ask students to memorize the cultural knowledge involved in the text,and teachers don’t give a further explanation.Moreover,in order to finish the teaching tasks,some teachers even use limited time to teach cultural knowledge during the class.Teachers don’t pay enough attention to cultivating cultural awareness in reading teaching,which also results in a partial lack of students’ cultural knowledge.However,there are actually some problems appearing from students’ overall response.Students lost interest in English reading,which results in the terrible environment in the classroom and poor learning effect.What’s more,reading achievements can not be significantly achieved and many students’ reading abilities can not reach the requirements of the English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2011).Therefore,in the junior middle school English class,a teacher needs to encourage students’ subjective initiative,to stimulate students’ learning interests,to develop students’ autonomous learning ability and to create a good learning environment.Only in this way,can students develop reading habits,master reading strategies and to form reading ability.This research,based on cultural schema theory,is to explore English reading teaching in junior high school.Cultural schema can be divided into three categories: the overlapping of cultural schema,the conflict of cultural schema,and the vacancy of cultural schema.After many years of development,its theory and practice have been improved day by day,and the research results have been rich which provides a lot of experience for follow-up research.Cultural schema theory will be applied into English culture teaching in the junior high school to solve the problems in reading teaching.The study explores three research questions in the application of cultural schema theory.1.How does the cultural schema theory affect junior high school students’ interests in English reading? 2.How does the cultural schema theory affect junior high school students’ achievements in English reading? 3.How does the cultural schema theory affect junior high students to mater their English reading strategies?The research involved a total of 86 students from two classes in the Grade 9 of a junior high school in Huludao,Liaoning Province for a four-month teaching experiment.To complete the experiment,the research instruments in the research process include pre-test,post-test,questionnaire and interview.This research uses both quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis to analyse the collected data with SPSS 26.0.The conclusion of the study is that applying the cultural schema theory can intrigue students’ reading interests,improve students’ academic achievements,and facilitate students to master the reading strategies in English reading learning.The research expands the range of applicable learners of cultural schema theory,and preliminarily verifies its feasibility and superiority in the teaching of English reading in junior one.Applying cultural schema theory to English reading teaching in junior one can promote students’ English reading interest,English reading achievements and English reading strategies.It is worthy of application and promotion in junior high school English reading teaching in the future.