The Study On The Application Of Schema Theory To English Pre-reading Instruction In Senior High School

This research attempts to apply the schema theory to the pre-reading instruction in senior high school to see whether it can raise the students'reading interest, make the students form a strategied reading habit and improve their reading effeciency. The author of this thesis applies the schema theory to the pre-reading instruction in two ways:One is building the students'schema, the other is activating the students' schema. In this process, the reading strategies such as predicting and skimming will be trained.A four-month experiment was carried out in Yunhe Senior High School of Tongzhou District in Beijing. The author of the thesis used two classes in Senior Grade One taught by herself as the experimental class and the control class. In the experimental class schema-oriented pre-reading teaching instruction was adopted while in the control class the traditional teaching method was utilized. She used a pre-test and a post-test, two questionnaires and an interview records to collect data.Data analysis of the research show that the application of schema theory to pre-reading instruction is beneficial to the students in senior high school. Under the teacher's instruction, the students'reading interest and confidence can be raised. They can learn to build and activate their background knowledge in their reading and can accumulate the background knowledge in an active way. Gradually, they can develop a strategy-based reading habit and finally improve their reading efficiency.This thesis consists of 6 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the background, purpose as well as the significance of the study. Chapter 2 is the literature review part, which describes some relevant theories and researches. Chapter 3 focuses on the author's design on how to apply schema theory to pre-reading instruction. Building and activating the schema are the two main aspects. Chapter 4 describes the whole experimental procedure. Chapter 5 analyzes the data of the experiment and presents the results of data. Chapter 6 comes to the conclusion of the thesis and the author put forward some suggestions for future studies.