Instructional Design And Experimental Research Based On Schema Theory For Seven Grade English Reading Class

Reading is the essential part of English teaching, and how to improve students' reading competence has long been the core objective for English instruction. The development of reading theories and practice has been influenced by education, psychology, linguistics and psycholinguistics. Reading used to be considered as inflexible and passive decoding process. However, for the last two decades, researchers have applied schema theory to reading instruction with the results that reading is regarded as an active psychological process in which readers'linguistic knowledge and schema knowledge interact. It's proved that schema theory plays a positive role in English reading teaching by proposing the students-oriented reading model which facilitates them to activate the stored cognitive schema, background information and relevant cultural knowledge so as to complete the semantic construction of the texts. However, the research and exploration mostly focus on college students or those of high school who have sufficient language knowledge while less research is carried out for primary or junior middle school students who lack linguistic competence and knowledge. In essence, they need the utilization of schema to enhance reading and make up for the poor language competence.In this paper, the writer discusses these issues:whether English teachers of grade 7 can effectively apply schema theory to reading teaching, whether they can arouse students' reading interest and uplift their reading competence. Based on schema theory, the writer carries out the empirical study aiming at exploring how to apply schema rationale to seven grade English reading teaching and how to enhance students'reading ability.To study these issues, the writer carried out teaching and research in Class 7 and 8 in Grade 7 of Nanjing Ninghai Junior Middle School from September(2010) to February(2011). Using the textbook "Fun with English (7A)", the writer utilized schema theory in various activities in reading class with the purpose of enhancing students'reading ability. Executing schema-oriented instruction model, the writer organized pre-reading, while reading and post reading activities, guided students to make use of stored background information and experience to predict, analyze and comprehend the text. The data collected from questionnaire, pretest and post-test and interview prove that the teaching model strengthen seven-grade students'reading competence, promote their reading efficiency, foster good reading habits and arouse interest in reading.