An Experimental Study Of The Application Of Schema Theory In EFL Listening Teaching

With the development of economy of our country and the increase of trade with foreign countries, requirement of English acquisition becomes more and more , important. Listening comprehension, as one of the four basic language skills in college English, has gained more and more attention. At the same time, listening comprehension is also a difficult part in English learning. In recent years, studies on application of schema theory to listening comprehension have become more and more popular in both pedagogical theory and experiments.Schemata are a person's existing concepts about the world, or in other words, are the previously acquired knowledge structures, including linguistic knowledge, cultural knowledge and so on. These schemata can be used not only to interpret but also to predict situations occurring in our environment. A schema is structured in the sense that it represents the relationships among its component parts. Furthermore, these schemata can play a role only after being activated. According to schema theory, when people try to learn new things, they need to connect acquired concepts and past experience (background knowledge) with new things. Interpretation of new things relies on the existing schemata, and the inputs should be consistent with them. The modes of information processing include top-down and bottom-up processes.Based on schema theory in cognitive psychology, the present study examines the nature of listening comprehension and point out that listening comprehension is an interactive model of both top-down and bottom-up processes. 149 non-English majors of Shandong Agricultural Administrators College have participated in the study. Two listening tests of practice materials of CET4 listening are selected deliberately and taken seriously. The subjects are narrowed down to 64 for this investigation; based on the performances, they are divided into two groups: 32 high achievers and 32 low achievers. Following that are two well-structured questionnaires which are designed by the author and replied by the subjects. The data collected are stored into the...