Cultural Background Knowledge On English Reading Comprehension In Junior Secondary School

Many students have difficulties in obtaining the overall meanings of texts, although they have know all the meanings of the words and the rules of grammar . From the schema theory, we know that the ability to understand texts is based not only on the reader's linguistic knowledge, but also on his or her general knowledge of the world and the extent to which that knowledge is activated during the mental process of reading. The analysis of the two classes shows that cultural background knowledge plays an important role on English reading comprehension in junior school.This paper intends to propose some suggestions to help students reach a deeper understanding of texts in intensive reading classroom within the framework of schema theory. It mainly discusses the important effect of prior knowledge on further understanding. By carrying out experiment to apply these approaches into actual use, the conclusion can be made that texts become easier to understand when the teacher enhances the students' prior knowledge and guide them to link their existing knowledge to the new text.