An Application Of Schema Theory To English Reading Teaching And Its Limitations In Senior High School

The English Curriculum Standard for Senior Middle Schools states that the cognitive characteristics of senior high school students and the need for their learning development have made it necessary for English teachers to improve the students’ abilities in obtaining, analyzing, and handling information by using the English language, with an emphasis on developing their language competence and the ability to use the language for real communication, in order to lay a life-time foundation for students’further study and development. English reading is an essential method for students in senior high schools to acquire knowledge, increase the ability of oral English and develop their writing skills as well This is why English teachers of senior high schools should take cultivating students’reading ability as an essential teaching target.Nevertheless, as is known to us, though having learned English for quite some time, many a student often has trouble in comprehending a passage. In Senior English reading teaching, traditional reading teaching method tends only to analyze the knowledge and grammar rules. However, it neglects to develop students’ability to use the language for communications; it neglects students’learning interest and the necessity for them to form good reading habits by employing reading strategies. As a result, the students’reading ability can not be improved to a high level.Since the schema theory was applied to language teaching and learning, the experts and scholars at home and abroad have made a great deal of investigations and researches. After reading the related literature, books and thesis, the author found that most of the previous researches were concentrated on the study of the inter-relationship between schema theory and reading comprehension, but not many researches were done on senior high students’present reading conditions and the application of schema theory to in-class reading activities. More importantly, some teachers thought that by merely encouraging students to make use of the background knowledge the teacher provided, their reading ability could naturally be improved. As a matter of fact, the expectation cannot always be met even though the schema theory is applied in practical English reading class. The schema-oriented reading teaching approach still has some limitations, which can be further improved by a series of teaching activities in reading comprehension.According to the present situation of reading teaching at home and abroad and under the guidance of schema theory, the author of this thesis has made an investigation on the English reading learning situation of100senior high school students, taking advantage of questionnaires, interviews and tests. The author designed and conducted an experiment, which lasted one semester from the beginning of September in2010to the end of January2011in Tanggu No.2Senior High School of Tianjin. Based on schema theory and the present teaching situation, the author sets up the hypothesis as follows.H1:The schema-oriented reading teaching approach obeys the cognitive rules of the teenagers more than the traditional reading teaching method does, which can help students adopt a positive attitude towards English reading and the scientific value of learning. H2:The schema-oriented reading teaching approach would be more effective to reading teaching and learning, in which the original schema is activated, the new schema is built and consolidated, the reading strategies are cultivated, and certainly the reading abilities are improved. Meanwhile, with different approaches applied and activities taken in the control class and the experiment class, as the collected data is analyzed on the computer, the hypotheses of this research were proved to be correct. The research result shows that the students in the experiment class have expanded their knowledge, cultivated willingness in reading learning and had a better performance in reading comprehension. Most important of all, the students appreciate the schema-oriented reading teaching approach, which helps them taste the joy of achievement. Now that the schema-oriented English reading approach is applied effectively, the author would like to apply the schema theory in listening, speaking and writing situations in and out of class. Over as the research is, the schema-oriented English reading approach is worth carrying out in the control class for all the students’equal development and further progress.