A Research On The Application Of The Schema Theory In The Middle School English Reading Teaching

This thesis aims at proving the teaching method guided by the schema theory or the schema-based teaching method is more effective for the improvement of the students'reading ability than the traditional teaching method by carrying out questionnaire-based investigations and doing a teaching experiment which involved 60 subjects and lasted four months. Instruments used in the research include questionnaires, pre-test and post-test.A comparison between the control class and the experimental class in terms of the subjects'score in the post-test demonstrates a significant improvement in the experimental class and an insignificant improvement in the control class though the two classes are academically parallel at the beginning of the experiment, proving that the schema-based teaching method is more effective than the traditional teaching method for enhancing students'reading ability.This thesis consists of six parts. In the first part which is an introduction, the current situation of English reading teaching in middle school practice are fully explained to provide necessary background for the research. It is pointed out that the current teaching method fails to significantly improve students'reading ability and dampens students'interest in English reading and English learning as a whole and thus the research done by the author is of great practical significance. The second part is a literature review where the schema theory is explained in detail. A key concept of the schema theory is that one's prior knowledge plays significant role in comprehending new things. This concept has a great implication on the English reading teaching. In the third part, an elaboration is made on how the three types of schema including the linguistic schema, the content schema and the formal schema contribute to more effective reading teaching and how they could be developed and activated on the part of students in an English reading lesson. In the fourth part, the author fully explains how the experiment was done. In the seventeen-week-long experiment, four questionnaire-based investigations were carried out and two tests including a pre-test and a post-test were designed to collect necessary data. This part also includes a teaching case to show what the English reading teaching is like under the guidance of the schema theory. The fifth part of the thesis is an analysis of and discussion on the data. The comparison between the control class and the experimental class shows that in the post-test, the experimental class which was academically parallel with control class in the pre-test witnessed a more substantial increase in the mean score, excellence rate and pass rate than the control class, indicating schema-based teaching method could substantially enhance students'reading ability. This result is further verified through the statistical software SPSS 13.0. The feedback given by the experimental class in the post-questionnaire, which is quite different from the feedback in the pre-questionnaire, also suggests the schema-based teaching method could substantially improve students'reading habits and develop their interest in English reading. The last part of the thesis is a conclusion. In this part, the author summarizes the findings of the experiment and her deeper reflections incurred by the research, explains limitations of the research and offer suggestions for further research. The author hopes by doing this research she could make contribution to the English reading teaching in junior middle schools in Hohhot.