The Application Of Schema Theory To Teaching Of College English Writing

Based on the previous studies, this thesis attempts to investigate the functions of schema-oriented teaching approach aiming at improving the students'writing abilities and arousing their interests in writing. After discussing the relationships between schema and English writing, the author conducts an empirical study on the application of schema theory in teaching of college English writing course. And four research questions are advanced, namely, 1. What difficulties will students of Northeast Dianli University meet in writing compositions? 2. Is it effective to adopt schema-oriented approach to improve the students'writing abilities? 3. Does schema theory have the same effect on different genres of writing, taking argumentation and narration as examples? 4. What are the possible teaching steps the teacher could follow to help students activate and construct their schemata? What kind of activities could be carried out? During the study, both qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted. A questionnaire is applied, which collects information about the current situations of English writing. The purpose of this questionnaire is to deplore students'attitudes toward writing, writing habits and difficulties they meet during writing. At the same time, pre-test and post-test are held. The purpose of those two tests is to examine whether schema-oriented instruction is effective or not and to deplore whether effects varies in different genres by comparing posttests of argumentation and narration. After acquiring the data, the author analyzes them through SPSS, including paired samples'T-test and independent-sample's T-test.Through analyzing the data obtained from the experiment and summarizing the interview results, the author obtains some significant findings:(1) Most students fail to use correct words, grammar and structures. They also feel hard to present persuasive and creative ideas in logical way. Moreover, they admit they know little about western cultures. And some students even could not distinguish different genres.(2) Students from EC have got significant progress than students from CC. It shows that schema theory plays a vital role in improvements of the students' writing proficiency.(3) By comparison of argumentation and narration, it indicates that the extent of improvement between different genres is nearly the same.(4) The author divides the teaching procedure into four steps, namely, pre-writing, drafting, revising and final drafting. In order to apply schema theory to teaching English writing, the author combines the first three steps with schema activation and construction, schema consolidation and perfection of schema. Pre-writing is the main and the most important step of schema activation and construction. In this section, oral discussions, listening and reading activities are carried out and it is proved that those activities are useful to activate and construct students'schemata. Drafting is the main process of consolidating the students'schema and revising is the stage of perfecting schema. As the experiment results proved, the schema activation and construction, schema consolidation and perfection of schema are effective and efficient means of improving students'writing abilities. Oral discussions, listening and reading activities are significant activities in schema-oriented teaching.