Schema Theory And ESL Writing

With the advent and development of modern cognitive psychology, the concept of Schema has been enriched, making it possible to apply it to the arena of ESL teaching research.Schema is a "hypothetical mental framework for representing generic concepts stored in memory" (Rumelhart 1980). According to contemporary schema theory, information processing is a top-down process that guides a selective search for data relevant to the expectations set up by an activated schema, In the case of reading, schemata provide mental frameworks that help the reader to go beyond what is explicitly stated in order to make sense of them, though we are normally unaware of the extent of such interpretation in our everyday reading.This explanation is quite different from conventional viewpoint about reading, which suggests that the meaning of a text is "contained in" the text, that is, it is accreted by adding up the meanings of individual words, and it may be 'extracted' by readers. Evidence shows that readers sometimes do get confused with or misread the meaning of a sentence or a paragraph even though they seem to know every word of it. Such situations frequently occur in cross-culture communications: on the one hand, ESL readers may have a difficult time when they try to comprehend the meaning of an English text; On the other hand, an article written by an ESL learner may get English readers in bewilderment. Some instructional strategies based on schema theory may be a solution to the problem.By comparing carefully content and formal schemata of English with those of Chinese, we know that apart from "denotative" meaningsobtained from English-Chinese dictionaries, words of the two languages may have metaphoric usages deeply rooted in their cultures, no matter whether they are used singly or combined with other words. Awareness of the incomplete overlapping schemata involved in seemingly corresponding words or expressions between the two languages is one of the key elements in ESL writing. The comparison also reveals that traditional Chinese writing style represents somewhat "spiral" characteristics, whereas typical English paragraphs are of linear or "tree-like" order.On the basis of previous research on ESL reading and by exploring the intrinsic correlation between reading and writing, the author suggests four combined reading/writing instructional strategies: semantic map, con tent-based reading, advanced organizer and dialogue journal in ESL teaching. The results of an empirical study testify that combination of reading and writing is an effective way to improve students' comprehensive writing capabilitiesThis thesis is composed of four chapters. Chapter one introduces some basic aspects of Schema theory including the status quo applications of Schema theory on ESL teaching, especially the teaching of ESL reading. Chapter two analyzes some problems in ESL writing due to different Schemata between Chinese and English and explores the application of Schema theory to ESL writing. Chapter three recommends a brand new ESL writing methodology on the basis of analysis above. At the end of the thesis, the author does an empirical study that supports the author's view.