| The term "schema" was evolved out of the Gestalt psychology and Bartlett's theory concerning human memory. It is generally accepted that Bartlett was credited with first proposing, the concept of schema as an active organization of past reactions or experiences. He suggested that memory took the form of schema which provided a mental framework for understanding and remembering information. Many years later, it was introduced into reading by Rumelhart (1980), Carrell (1981) and Hudson (1982). Since then, more and more linguists have showed their interests in the discussion and study of schema theory that has usually been utilized in researches such as ESL or EFL education.Schema is usually taken to mean the general postulated knowledge structure in readers' mind. Schema theory proposes that readers possess different conceptual frameworks which they bring to the reading of a text and which they use to make sense of what they read. In other words, schema theory is an explanation of how readers use prior knowledge to comprehend and learn from reading materials. The theory claims that the nature of reading comprehension is counted as an active process. In this process, the reader starts from the visual stimuli in the text through activation and mobilization of prior schemata in his mind and obtains a proper interpretation of the text, which is consistent with the intended intention of the author and has an impact on the reader. Efficient comprehension requires the ability to relate the textual material to the reader's own prior knowledge.On the basis of a brief introduction to schema and schema theory, this paper tries to discuss the integration of schema theory in the teaching of EFL reading for freshmen students specifically. At the same time it puts forward some attentive suggestions for practical application of schema theory in the teaching of EFL reading.The paper falls into five chapters. The following is the outline of what will be done in each of the successive chapters.The first chapter is intended to give a brief introduction of how the notion of schema came into being and some important researches and studies on schema theory and its association with EFL reading comprehension.Chapter two is devoted to the discussion of schema principles including its definition, structural organization, types, functions, characteristics and schema creation and modification. Generally speaking, schema refers to readers' stored (prior) knowledge and its storage structure, which covers almost all aspects of knowledge and experience. Schemata are hierarchical in that the large schema includes the small one and the small schema includes the even smaller one. It is widely accepted that there are three types of schema-language schemata, content schemata and formal schemata. Their functions can be summarized as: 1) providing background knowledge 2) generating expectations 3) facilitating inferences 4) focusing the reader's attention. Schema has variables. Each schema can be embedded in other schemata and itself contains sub-schema. Schema varies in abstractness and schema represents knowledge rather than definition.Chapter three discusses reading process including the nature of reading and five levels of comprehension, and then explores the relationship between schema theory and reading comprehension. According to Barrett, there are altogether five levels of comprehension-literal comprehension, reorganization, inferential comprehension, evaluation and appreciation. There are different views as to the nature of reading-some researchers regard it as a cognitive process and some recent researchers think of it as an interactive process. Then, how different types of schemata affect reading comprehension is discussed respectively in details, with special attention to cultural-specific content schemata because of its remarkable effect on students' EFL reading.Chapter four starts with a discussion about a questionnaire on freshmen's background/prior knowledge, followed by tentative analysis. And an experiment is th...
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