On Schema Theory And English Reading Instruction In Senior High Schools

According to the new English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schools(published in 2003, shortened as New Curriculum in the following), the development of students'reading competence should be attached great importance to in the stage of senior high school. Thus how to achieve this goal becomes the core task of English instruction for senior high school in China. However, there are many problems in English reading teaching and learning in senior high school. Therefore, it is necessary to re-examine the reading teaching and learning, to adopt new reading ideas, and to improve our teaching methods. In this project, the author makes some introduction to schema theory and tries to further the development of schema theory in the following aspects: schema awareness, schema construction and schema abilities. Meanwhile, the research also tries to improve teaching in implementing the New Curriculum by means of integrating the profound theory with reading practice.Our study believes that an active engagement in reading is a basic requirement of schema theory, and activeness in teaching and learning is the most important feature of successful reading. Our survey indicates that there exist two problems in English reading instruction in senior high school: lack of schema awareness among teachers and students, and lack of schema abilities among students. Due to lack of schema awareness, high school students lack practices not only in reading skills and reading strategies, but also in reading activities. Those practices are mainly related to content schema and formal schema. Therefore students are weak in their schema abilities. To settle those problems and to improve students'reading skill, reading instruction should be based on schema theory."Schema"refers to framework stored in human brain for cognition of things. Schema theory...