The Application Of The Schema Theory To The Teaching Of English Writing In Senior Middle School

English writing is one of the most important components of Senior High School English teaching and learning. It also plays an important role in the Senior High School students'learning. However, in the history of English teaching in China, we have not attached much importance to English writing. So the result of English writing is not satisfying. For English teachers, writing teaching has been perplexing them for a long time. And for English learners in Senior High School, the teaching of writing in the English class in China is supposed to be the most difficult course.The schema theory has been widely used for the teaching of English reading and listening comprehension, but so far it has not been used so extensively in the teaching of English writing. This dissertation is an attempt to apply the theory to in the teaching of English writing in Senior Three High School. The experimental classes uses a teaching model based on the schema theory, while the control class was taught in the traditional way. After a semester time, the experimental students'writing competence was found to have improved.This dissertation is composed of six parts:The introduction is a brief discussion of the background and significance of this study.Chapter One briefly introduces the current status of English writing in high school students in China. Then it discusses the importance of the research and analyzes the problems that the students have in writing.Chapter Two is a literature review of the schema theory. This serves as the theoretical basis of this paper. At the same time, in this part, it explores the relationship between writing in English and the schema theory. It further illustrates the feasibility of the research and makes clear how the experiment will be done.Chapter Three discusses some theories about the teaching of English writing from three aspects:research on the writing process, domestic and international research on the status of English writing and common English teaching model.Chapter Four is the core part of this research. It is a detailed description of the experiment and a discussion of its result which leads support to our hypothesis that the schema theory can be used to help improve the teaching of writing. In fact it is an effective way to enhance students'writing ability. Chapter Five is the conclusion. It is a brief summary of the findings and shortcomings of this research and puts forward a number of suggestions for future research.