The Application Of Schema Theory In English Listening Teaching

Schema theory has been one of the prevailing theories in the filed of language teaching in the past twenty years or so. Schema is people's general knowledge about the world, namely one's "pre-existent knowledge" or "background knowledge". The theory of how a reader or a listener utilizes his schematic knowledge to achieve efficient comprehension when reading or listening is called schema theory.On the basis of previous researches, the paper discusses in detail the application of schema theory in the teaching of listening by means of activating students' previous schemata storied in their brains or building up new schemata before listening and points out that the best way of applying schema theory to English listening teaching is to divide the procedure of class listening teaching into three stages: pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening. In the pre-listening stage, the teacher organizes some warm-up activities such as the discussion of questions about the topic or the key words in order to help students build up the new schemata and activate the previous schemata stored in students' brains. In while-listening stage, the teacher reminds the students to use some techniques and strategies while listening so that they can comprehend and recall the listening material quickly. In post-listening stage, what students have learned is consolidated by someexercises of combining listening with speaking and writing. The most outstanding features of this model are that it emphasizes the function of pre-existent knowledge in listening comprehension as well as the role of pre-listening and post-listening, thereby it makes up the insufficiency of the traditional model of teaching listening and improves the effect of listening teaching.On the basis of previous theoretic researches, the writer conducted a small-scaled teaching experimental research, the aim of which is to verify the active function of the schema theory and the "three-stage model" of teaching listening in improving students' English listening comprehension. The subsidiary aim is to investigate the effect of background knowledge on listening material of different degree of difficulty in listening comprehension. The subjects are 60 English majors in grade three in two classes from Inner Mongolia Foreign Trade and Economy Secondary School. The "three-stage model" of teaching listening was used according to the request and the procedure of this model in the experimental class while the old teaching model was used in the control class during the eight weeks experiment. After the experiment, the two classes were given the same test and the scores were analyzed by SPSS statistical package. The conclusions drawn from the experiment are that the "three-stage model" of teaching listening based on the schema theory can improve students' English listening comprehension and English listening teaching and the background knowledge produces a great impact on the effect of listening comprehension. In addition, the moredifficult the material is, the greater effect the background knowledge produces.The paper consists of six chapters. Chapter one is the introduction to the purposes and the significance of this paper. Chapter two is a brief review of literature, including both the conception, types and development of schema and the process of listening comprehension and the function of the schema in listening comprehension. In chapter three the writer explores in detail how the "three-stage model" of teaching listening is applied to English listening teaching. A small-scale experimental research is described in chapter four. Some advice to the teachers who are using or are going to use the "three-stage model" of teaching listening to teach listening has been given by the writer in chapter five followed by the direction of future research as well as the summary of the paper.