Application Of Schema-oriented English Reading Teaching Method In Senior High School: Theories And Practice

The Ministry of Education issued the New Senior English Curriculum Standards in 2001 and one of its important stipulations is that senior high school teachers should lay particular emphasis on improving students'reading ability. It is an obvious representation of the significant status of reading teaching in senior high school English teaching. At present, contents covered in English reading texts are so rich that they have been one of the main channels for teachers to develop students' reading abilities. Although most of senior high school English teachers have realized its importance, they still adopt the traditional reading teaching model in their daily English teaching. In other words, they pay too much attention to the instruction of grammar, vocabulary and the literal meaning of the text and ignore that of the whole framework and the cultrual background. As a result, the reading ability of senior high school students doesn't get some visible improvement even if they have made arduous efforts.Schema theory was posed in the middle of 1870s and it deems that schema knowledge of readers is closely connected with their reading ability. Actually, it has an important instructional meaning for reading teaching in senior high school. Based on this point and related stipulations of the New Curriculum Standards, senior high school English teachers should manage to break bondages of the traditional English reading teaching model. And, they must pay more attention to developing students'ability in constructing and activating their own schema knowledge during their reading process of English texts. Only in this way can they help students establish a substantial foundation for fully comprehending the contents and improving their reading ability.This thesis analyzes main obstacles that senior high school students encounter in English reading process and disadvantages of the traditional English reading teaching model. It also gives a detailed expounding on how to enhance students'reading ability efficiently by using the schema-oriented English reading teaching method. And, the study mainly combines qualitative and quantitative research methods. After analyzing results of the questionnaire, experiments and the interview, the researcher finds it is quite necessary and significant to apply the schema-oriented English reading teaching method in senior high school. Actually, the research result shows that the application of schema-oriented English reading teaching method can effectively enhance students'English reading ability and the teaching efficiency.