The Application Of Schema Theory To The Teaching Of English Reading Comprehension In Senior High School

Reading in high schools has always been the focus of the whole teaching procedure in L2 teaching and at the same time it is both the center of foreign language learning and a learning measure. However, in today's English classes in high schools, the teachers only attach importance to grammar and language knowledge while neglecting developing the students'reading ability. In addition, seldom do they introduce reading strategies to students and encourage them to try practicing reading with a time limitation. Even worse, there are many reading obstacles among middle school students, like vocabulary, sentence structures, the language in different contexts and situations, different types of literature, reading strategies, culture background knowledge and so on. So it is these obstacles that lead to the bad reading results.The paper written under the guidance of schema theory points out that the reading process is in fact an interaction between reading materials and readers with a certain knowledge concerning the very materials. Reading classes will be more effective if they are carried out under the guidance of some practical theory. In the paper the English reading training is under the direction of schema theory. The writer of the paper makes a point that some schema knowledge plays an important role in English reading and points out how schema theory is to be applied to reading classes. In reading classes teachers shall encourage students to have more new schema knowledge based on what they have already had in their minds so as to improve the students'reading ability.