The Application Of Schema Theory In The Teaching Of Spoken English In Senior High Schools

Although speaking, together with listening, reading and writing, is known as one of the four basic skills of language learning, it has received far less attention than the other skills in ESL/EFL teaching in most senior high schools due to the fact that speaking is not included in the National College Entrance Examination. Consequently, the students who have learned English for several years very rarely seem confident when asked to express themselves in English. And those who have the chance to receive further study in English-speaking countries fail to communicate normally with the native speakers. These students cannot even respond correctly to the utterances of some native speakers which does not consist of many new words. This consequence is caused by just focusing attention on the word and sentence teaching in spoken language teaching in senior middle schools, ignoring the oral discourse production and oral discourse understanding.Schema theory is an outstanding theory that has a profound effect on the receptive skills of reading and listening and productive skills of speaking and writing. However, previous teaching models based on schema theory mainly stress the importance of the prior knowledge in reading and listening, neglecting its impact on speaking and writing.In view of the above situation, and on the basis of schema theory as well as speaking theory, this study attempts to apply schema theory to the teaching of spoken English, aiming to improve students'oral output by helping them to construct linguistic, formal and content schemata besides learning grammatically correct sentences by heart.The notion of schema was first put forward by Kant, a German philosopher in his book Critique of Pure Reason(1787). Later, a Gestalt Psychologist, Bartlett developed the schema theory in his book Remembering(1932) by redefining that schema is the active organization of the reflection and experiences of the past. Based on his theory, the American artificial intelligence expert Rumelhart (1980) further developed schema theory, claiming that schema is the interactive cognitive structure. Other scholars such as Anderson, Abelson, Minsky all defined schema in different ways and elaborated the theory from different perspectives. Whereas this theory has been applied a lot to foreign language learning and teaching, most of the research which investigated the effects of schemata on ESL/EFL learning and teaching was associated with listening and reading.In order to justify the role that schema theory plays in the teaching of spoken English and explore effective ways to improve students'spoken English, the author conducts a questionnaire survey, an experiment, two tests----a pre-test and a post-test, and an interview. 40 students from two classes in Grade 2 of the senior middle school of Yantai Scientific and Technical Development Zone are chosen as subjects of the research.The research was done as follows. To start with, a questionnaire survey is conducted by the author to collect information about the students'attitudes towards the speaking skill and some factors affecting the improvement of it. Then, a pre-test on spoken English is held in order to divide all the subjects into two groups of similar levels---the experiment group and the control group. Next, an experiment which applies schema theory to the teaching of spoken English is carried out in the experiment group. At the completion of the experiment, the subjects in both groups are organized to take a post-test to see whether the subjects in the experimental group have made more progress in their spoken English after a term's study and whether schema theory contributes to the improvement of their speaking ability. And eventually, an interview is done with ten subjects in the experimental group to investigate the bearings schema theory has on the improvement of their spoken English as well as their speaking strategies.From the data analysis of the pre-test and the post-test, we can see that the experimental group made more rapid progress than the control group, revealing that schema theory can be applied to improve the speaking ability of the students and that construction and activation of linguistic schemata, formal schemata and content schemata have positive effects on the students'better performance in their spoken English. Another finding is that lack of pre-speaking preparations and speakers'weak learning motivation, etc. are also factors influencing the learners'performance in English speaking.Some pedagogical implications for the teaching of spoken English are drawn from the research. To ensure the students better performance in a speaking task, the teachers should emphasize the creation, modification and activation of the students'schemata of different categories. Efficient ways should be adopted so that the students'speaking ability can be improved, such as stressing pre-speaking preparations, designing proper and practical activities, enlarging the students'vocabulary and encouraging students'extensive reading and listening. Hopefully, this study will cast light on the teaching of spoken English in the senior middle schools of China.