The Integrated Application Of Schema Theory And Discourse Analysis Theory To College English Reading Teaching

Reading is the foundation of all disciplines. People acquire all kinds ofnecessary knowledge of social life and social experience from reading. Also,reading ability is one of the most fundamental skills in the process of Englishlearning. Therefore, cultivating students’ reading ability is very important forcollege English. The study here just attempts to provide students with a better wayof improving their reading ability from the perspective of schema theory anddiscourse analysis theory. Schema theory reveals the rule that how people’sbackground knowledge structures affect their interpretation of discourse, and it alsoprovides a theoretical basis for people to learn the language; Discourse analysistheory pays attention to helping students to grasp reading skills and relevantbackground knowledge. This is helpful for improving students’ integrated languageability and integrated discourse analysis ability. Therefore, in the teaching practice,we can combine the two theories together according to the specific characteristics ofthe reading materials, which will be able to effectively improve students’understanding level and language ability.80undergraduate students of non-English majors at Shenyang NormalUniversity are chosen as the research subjects. They were divided into experimentalclass and control class and accepted a reading test and a questionnaire survey bothat the beginning and the end of the semester. During the semester, the students inexperimental class have received reading strategies training for16weeks. Thestrategy training mainly focuses on the explanation of schema theory and discourseanalysis theory and the skills of how to establish schema by the discourse analysis methods. The experiment mainly includes three stages: the pre-test stage-studentsof two classes take reading test and questionnaire survey; the experimental stage-cultivate reading strategies for students in experimental class from the view point ofschema theory and the theory of discourse analysis; post-test stage-students of twoclasses take the reading test again but only the experimental class students takequestionnaire survey.The study shows that the post-test scores of students in experimental class aregenerally higher than those of students in control class. Besides, the increase rate ofscores of students in experimental class is obviously higher than those of students incontrol class. According to the questionnaires, more and more students inexperimental class would like to use schema theory and discourse analysis theorystrategies in reading. All this proves that the integrated application of schema theorywith discourse analysis theory to college English reading is effective.