The Application Of Schema Theory In Task-based Approaches To Teaching English Reading In Senior High Schools

With the development of the theories of L2acquisition, reading hasraised widespread concern. Teaching approaches to English readingare now considered as the most important among all the following fivebasic skills, listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation. Readingis a process of recognition and communication in word. In today’sinformation society, reading is of great value. According to “EnglishTeaching Curriculum for High School Students”, high school coursesshould be adapted to students’ cognitive characteristics and theiracademic development needs, and they should lay emphasis onimproving students’ abilities to acquire knowledge, process information,and solve problems in addition to developing students’ basic languageskills. Naturally, how to improve students’ English reading abilitiesbecomes the focus of English teaching in China.Nowadays, one of the prevailing perspectives toward the analysisof reading process is the schema theory. A schema is usually defined asthe general knowledge structure in readers’ mind. The schema theoryguides learners to form new schemata according to their previousknowledge. Based on the theory, the nature of reading comprehensionis counted as an active process. Efficient comprehension requiresreaders’ ability to associate textual materials with their own previousknowledge.On the basis of schema theory and task-based teachingapproaches, the thesis aims at studying how to help students enrichlinguistic schemata, activate content schemata and perfect rhetoricalschemata in teaching reading in Oxford English (Southern JiangsuEdition), so that schema-oriented reading strategies can bedeveloped and desired tasks in classroom can be fulfilled. The study was carried out through documents and experiments.First, the author of the thesis gained a knowledge of the updates andthe trend of schema theory in development and other reading theorieswith the help of library and the Internet resources. Then the authorattempted to apply schema theory to teaching Oxford English readingso as to develop schema-oriented reading strategies. Finally, in theexperiment, schema-oriented reading strategies were adopted in theexperimental class while traditional lecturing method was applied in thecontrol class and the results of the experiment were compared andanalyzed afterwards.A conclusion was drawn that applying schema-oriented readingstrategies to teaching English reading in the form of classroom taskshelps to arouse students’ interests in reading, thus improving students’reading abilities.