Application Of Schema Theory In College English Reading Teaching For Non-English Major

The definition of "schemata" was first pointed out in the late 1600's, and consequently theorized in the 1980's. Researchers abroad and home state that schema theory has a significant effect on English reading. Nevertheless, scholars at home have made few studies on the relationship between schema theory and English reading for non-English major students. This thesis is organized to instruct college English reading for non-English major students by means of schema theory in order to find an effective way to promote non-English students' reading comprehension.On the basis of traditional linguistics, reading comprehension is a bottom-up decoding process. Teachers normally lead the students all through a class, explaining new words and phrases with analyzing the grammatical structure. As a result. seldom students have chances to take actively part in the reading process. They only remember the words and grammar points by rote. They understand the meaning of the single sentences without grasping the main idea and the structure of the text.Schema theory highlights that reading comprehension is an interactive process between readers and texts. Readers can employ schemata to follow the relationships among pieces of information and to fill in information that is not mentioned clearly. Accordingly, this thesis is chiefly to study three effective reading approaches-Bottom up model, Top down model and Interactive model, and analyze their application to the English reading teaching for non-English major students. Based on the careful analysis of the nature of reading process and the comparison of the three approaches to reading (the bottom-up model, the top-down model and the interactive model) by means of teaching process, it steps into a conclusion that the three approaches to teach English reading for non-English major student should fit to various reading materials. It advises that on the time of the reading process, the focus should be put both decoding the text and schematic knowledge on active guessing and predicting, activating the systemic of the reader, with the bottom-up and top-down strategies functioning interactively in order to improve the non-English major learners'reading ability and their ability of using the English language.This thesis consists of five chapters:Chapter One is Introduction, Chapter Two refers to Literature Review:schema theory, reading study and schema theory to English reading comprehension. Chapter Three is methodology; Chapter Four focuses on the application of schema theory to English reading teaching for non-English major students; and finally Chapter Five is the Conclusion.