The Application Of Schema Theory To Teaching English Writing With Process-focused Method To Non-English Major Students

To improve students’ ability of Listening, speaking, reading and writing roundlyis the inevitable choice of modern English education. As an important ability oflanguage application, writing is one of the important ways to transfer and expressinformation. Whether Students can write out a good English article or not is boundwith activating their writing schemata effectively. The schema theory has been widelyused for the teaching English reading and Listening comprehension，but so far it hasnot been used so extensively in the teaching English writing. This research appliesschema theory to teaching English writing with process-focused method tonon-English major students by empirical study. This study designs teaching activitiesaccording to the construction, activation, judgment and consolidation of schemata, toexplore more effective English writing teaching strategy, and to help students activatetheir writing schemata effectively, so as to improve their English writing ability. Inaddition, this research not only focuses on the construction and activation of writingcontent schema, but also on the construction of English writing process schema, tomake students know the writing process and master writing method.In this research, the participants are the students chosen from Xian PeiHuaCollege in Shaanxi province. In experiment class, teaching activities is designedbased on schema theory, which can help students to activate, construct, consolidateand improve their writing schemata well with process-focused teaching method. Incontrol class, the teacher uses process-focused method as usual. The author analyzestest results by SPSS statistical analysis software, and draws the following conclusions:(1) Schema theory plays a positive role in the improvement of non-English majorstudents’ English writing abilities.(2) Applying Schema theory in process-focusedmethod is more likely to activate students’ content schema and formal schema. Basedon this conclusion, the author puts forward some Suggestions for the teaching ofcollege English writing:(1) How to help students to activate writing schemaeffectively before writing;(2) How to help students to adjust, consolidate, complete and construct new schema after writing;(3) How to improve students’ English writingability with the process-focused method.