Application Of Schema Theory In Teaching Listening Comprehension To Non-English Majors

Listening is the most important and difficult skill among the four basic language skills—listening, speaking, reading and writing. In recent years, more and more researchers and teachers come to realize the significance of listening comprehension teaching. There have been quite a few ways considered to be instructive for improving listening comprehension. This paper intends to explore how college English teachers can apply schema theory in listening classes and how students can use schemata to facilitate their listening processing.Bartlett (1932) is the first psychologist to use the term schema. He holds the view that "the role of background knowledge in language comprehension has been formalized as schema theory." According to schema theory, a listener can understand a new text only when he utilizes previously acquired knowledge which is defined as schemata by linguists. Therefore, comprehending a text is an interactive process between the listener's background knowledge and the text.Background knowledge involves all the knowledge the listener learned before, such as linguistic knowledge, social knowledge, cultural knowledge, common sense, etc. To understand the action of background knowledge well, schematic knowledge is thought to be three types: linguistic schemata, content schemata and formal schemata. And according to schema theory, there is an interactive model in the process of comprehending a text: bottom-up process and top-down process. The two processes interact, so listeners can make use of them to understand the new text compensatory. In the listening process, listeners should active their existing schemata and create suitable schemata to interpret the new information. Due to the theory and research, schema theory can guide listening comprehension teaching.This paper, from the perspective of cognitive psychology, discusses the application of schema theory in listening process, in order to move away the obstacles in listening comprehension. It elaborates on the findings and problems in listening comprehension teaching and learning according to the survey implemented in HIST (Hunan Institute of Science and Technology). In accordance with the findings in the study, a framework for classroom listening comprehension teaching is suggested with the pedagogical sequence of pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening activities. In order to testify the feasibility and effectiveness of applying this framework to listening teaching, an experiment was carried out. 74 second-year non-English majors of Hunan Institute of Science and Technology as the subjects involve in an 18-week project. They are divided into two groups: experimental class and control class. The experimental class receives listening comprehension training involved schemata theory, and the control class receive conventional instruction. After the training, the students of experimental class turn out to be more effective in listening than before, and they outperform than those of control class. Finally, the listening test of CET4 is given to all the students of the two classes to check the effect of the experiment. The result of the test verifies that schemata are capable of enriching students' background knowledge and accordingly enhancing their listening comprehension ability.Research findings show that the schema-oriented instruction is an effective and systematic means for listening comprehension teaching. First, activating schemata enhances students' memory capability. Secondly, activating schemata promotes the use of listening strategy by the students. Thirdly, activating schemata fosters students' learning interests. Lastly, activating schemata enlivens classroom atmosphere. Based on the above experimental analysis and conclusion, the author put forward some suggestions for the teaching of English listening in the final chapter. Hopefully this study can contribute to the improvement of college English listening comprehension teaching effectively.