Schema Theory In College English Reading

- The newly revised College English Syllabus states clearly that"College English aims to develop a relatively high level of comprehension in reading and an appropriate level of comprehension in listening, speaking, writing and translation". Obviously, reading in foreign English language teaching and learning is the most important aspect in listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation. Reading is the most important aspect, for it is an important approach for students to acquire foreign language knowledge and skills. As Carrell said, for many students of English, reading is by far the most important of the four skills in the foreign language,particularly in English as a second or foreign language.However, the traditional teaching of reading based on grammar-translation has been prevailing. It views the EFL reading as a passive decoding process, in which new words, phrases and even sentence patterns are taken as discrete language points and elaborated upon by the teacher but the gist of the text is usually overlooked. This kind of teaching method inhibits students'reading performance and frustrates students'initiative. Therefore, developing students' reading ability with efficient approaches is one of English teachers'purposes.As schema theory is introduced, the TEFL reading is revolutionized to much extent. Schema theory, originated in the field of psychology in the study of mental organization for storing and retrieving the existing knowledge while dealing with the new information, has been applied in EFL learning and has great effect on reading comprehension. The significance of schema theory in the reading process was established with the development of research on the role of schema in reading. In this view, reading comprehension involves an interactive process between reader's schematic knowledge and the text itself. It can not only help reader understand each individual word, sentence, but also, at the same time, grasp the main idea and the author's intention. Therefore, for EFL reading, schema theory has been becoming necessary for its ability of balancing interaction in reading process.In view of the problems in college English reading teaching, schema theory implies some teaching principles to be followed by our teachers. As the research proved, the main factors that affect comprehension mainly include three parts: unfamiliarity with textual structures; lack of background knowledge; and failing in activating schema in reading process. After schema training on obeying the text-centered principle to analyze the textual structures and paying attention to background knowledge input and employing proper reading skills to activate appropriate schema, students improve their capacity of understanding information, enhance their overall reading skills and other language skills.This dissertation tries to elaborate the schema theory in the teaching of reading, providing a practical application in teaching reading, which is promising for teachers to facilitate the teaching of EFL reading in research and practice.