Research On The Design Of Elementary English Discourse Teaching Based On Schema Theory

In recent years, Schema Theory has been widely used in foreign language teaching and learning. "Schema", as one of the significant concepts in cognitive science, effectively promotes the development of English reading teaching and thus, it has a positive influence on students’ English reading learning. When it comes to reading understanding, we can divide the schema into three types:linguistic schema; content schema and formal schema. Schema Theory applied to the English discourse understanding teaching of primary school, this thesis intends to discuss discourse instructional design for English of primary school through a new research perspective. In addition, the application of Schema Theory in English discourse understanding of primary school will be encouraged, which can definitely improve both students’text learning abilities and their comprehensive language application abilities.Through documentation research, a theoretical discussion on instructional design for English of primary school has been explored. As a result, a systematic operation mode based on Schema Theory has been established and the teaching procedures consist of five steps:activate the existing schema to arouse the students’attention; find out the language barrier and enrich their language schema; utilize the formal schema to grasp the discourse structure; build up the schema system and analyze the discourse content; integrate the new discourse schema with the old knowledge in order to consolidate, expand as well as transfer. The essence of discourse learning means making "discourse schema" oriented, helping students construct, enrich and develop their schema. It also means a leaning process in which students fill slots of the discourse gradually. The final objectives of learning for students is to form a discourse schema. Students are able to master the knowledge and skills of English language in the context of the whole discourse study. Besides, students are able to manage the implementation of transferring, using and generating the new schema.Then, taking the design of the topic about "Holidays" which is from the New English Curriculum Standard level two as example, this paper develops a new instructional design. At the outset, I investigate the teaching and learning preparation conditions by questionnaire method and interview method from three aspects:the analysis of students’discourse learning conditions and their starting preparations, the analysis of discourse teaching situations plus the analysis of topic content. Next, provided that the analysis of learning objectives as well as the design of teaching methods, teaching media, procedure and evaluation, the whole instructional design about "At Christmas" is exploited based on schema theory. The justifications are explained so as to make it profound that we can understand the design concept and oriented value. Finally, the teaching design of the text is put into practice so that we can explore the possible effects of the design. Afterwards, reflections on teaching practice are taken and suggestions are put forward for further improvement.It is obviously proved that the practice of teaching is feasible and effective. On the one hand, it assists the teachers in clearing teaching ideas, deconstructing discourse content, finally they can improve and optimize their teaching behaviors. On the other, involved in this learning context, students can actively participate in classroom activities, appropriately use learning strategies, improve their interest in learning English, manage the construction of the discourse schema, and ultimately it promotes their discourse competence and fosters their discipline accomplishment.