A Study On The Application Of Schema Theory To English Reading Teaching For Fine Art Students In Senior High School

Reading is one of the major means to obtain information as well as an essential part of English teaching. Effective reading teaching can help students to acquire knowledge, accumulate vocabulary, master sentence patterns and improve writing capabilities. Besides, in NMET, the proportion of reading comprehension is as high as 60%.The English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School points out that the ultimate goal of reading teaching is to cultivate an efficient and independent reader, whose reading skills consist of micro-skills in various aspects. However, in the current English teaching in high school, most teachers tend to apply the traditional grammar-translation mode, based on grammar and syntactic analysis while neglecting discourse analysis and cultivation of students'reading capability. Students of the author are fine art students, whose learning style, knowledge structure and teaching schedule are somewhat different from that of average students, rendering the traditional reading teaching ineffective.Therefore, the author attempted to introduce the schema theory into the reading teaching for fine art students of senior high school and selected two parallel classes randomly (One is for the experiment and the other is for control and comparison) in No. Six Middle School of Shijiazhuang to organize a four-month empirical study. The experiment class received training in reading strategies based on schema theory: activating existing schema, relying on the accumulated knowledge to acquire information; constructing new schema, centering on discourse comprehension and improving reading skills through proper training; consolidating schema, helping students to check their extent of comprehension after reading so as to strengthen and enrich their knowledge. The control class still received traditional teaching method. Data analysis showed that compared with the control class, students in the experimental class made more progress in EFL reading after training, It proved that the reading teaching mode based on schema theory can help to stimulate students'reading interest and nurture their positive feeling towards reading and students can improve their reading comprehension and speed by activating the existing schema and establishing new schema. The data of the questionnaire and interview also proved that schema-oriented instruction could improve students'reading habits and the ability of discourse comprehension. The conclusion is that given the limited time and efforts of fine art students, the reading teaching with the schema theory can stimulate their reading interest, cultivate the positive feelings towards reading, improve their reading habits, and help them to intentionally apply reading strategies to better their reading comprehension and speed. Therefore, it is of the author's opinion that it is feasible to apply the schema theory into the English reading teaching for the fine art students of senior high school.