| As the principal way to get information and the key to knowledge from written language, the importance of reading is reflected in the College English Syllabus. The newly revised College English Syllabus (1999) states clearly that "College English aims to develop in students a relatively high level of comprehension in reading and an appropriate level of comprehension in listening, speaking, writing and translation". Obviously, reading is put in the first place among the five skills. Syllabus, as the teaching guidance for teachers, plays a decisive role in designing textbooks, selecting methodologies, and most of all, formulating the teaching objectives. Therefore, developing students' reading ability with efficient approaches is our purpose. In the teaching of College English reading, however, there exist some problems, which result in failing to cultivate students' reading ability. Reading is still students' headache. Most students fail in CET band-4 just due to their poor performance in reading comprehension. In view of this kind of problem, this paper focuses on the guidance of schema theory to the teaching of reading."The role of background knowledge in language comprehension has been formalized as schema theory" (Carrell & Eisterhold, 1987:220). Schema theory holds the view that reader's background knowledge plays a significant role in the process of reading. Any text, either spoken or written, does not by itself carry meaning, it only provides directions for listeners or readers as to how they should retrieve or construct meaning from their own previously acquired knowledge. This previously acquired knowledge is called background knowledge. Eiackgroundknowledge involves all the knowledge the reader acquired before, such as linguistic knowledge, social knowledge, cultural knowledge, common senses, etc. According to schema theory, comprehending a text is an interactive process between reader's background knowledge and the text. When a reader applies his background knowledge to guide him through reading, he in effect adopts the top-down process to make prediction ami assumptions about the incoming text. Simultaneously, he uses the bottom-up process to acquire information from decoding words, phrases and sentences in the text. This process assists him to be aware of the new information and to make proper adjustments. The continuous interaction of both the reader and the text leads to an agreement on the text, which signifies the accomplishment of reading.The more background knowledge a reader has in his mind, the easier it is for him to decode the reading text. It is believed that "Some students' apparent reading problems may be problems of insufficient background knowledge" (Carrell 1988b: 245). Thus for our college English teachers, an important task in reading teaching is to help them build more new schemata. Reading problems are not just caused by schema deficiencies, and the "relevant schemata musl be activated" (Carrell 1988a: 105) because the attainment of background knowledge will not make sure that they are utilized correctly and appropriately. Therefore, another task for our English teacher is to help them activate existing schema.At the same lime, in view of the problems in College English reading teaching, schema theory implies some teaching principles to be followed by our reading teachers. For example, the class should be student-centered; cultural backgroundknowledge should be emphasized; awareness of textual structure should be reinforced; students' vocabulary and reading skills should be developed; studentsshould be encouraged to read extensively outside classroom.In building or activating background knowledge, teachers should not dominate the class, but provide students chances to experience real reading, to apply what they have learnt to practical communication, hence, to improve their reading ability. Varieties of classroom activities that can arouse students' interest to take part in them serve this purpose. Therefore, some classroom activities for activatin...
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