A Study Of Schema Theory In Improving Students’ English Reading Ability In Senior High School

Reading comprehension is an active and dynamic process in which many kinds of knowledge are involved. The traditional reading teaching usually focuses on the explanation of words and phrases, the analysis of grammatical structures, followed by the translation of sentences one by one. So during the instruction process, students seldom have chances to participate actively in the reading process. They just receive the information passively. Considering the problems in traditional reading teaching, some new instruction method must be adopted to change the situation.Schema theory has absorbed the essence from various reading models, which emphasizes readers’background knowledge, gradually attracts people’s attention in the reading field. Many studies have been conducted both at home and abroad on the relationship between schema theory and English reading comprehension, and these studies proved the positive effects of schema theory on English reading comprehension teaching. Schema theory throws new light on the development of reading theories, and it is necessary to apply it into the teaching of English reading.In order to integrate theory with practice, the author came up with a teaching model based on schema theory, and then carried out an empirical study in Xiong Yue No.2Senior High School to investigate the real situation of the students. The students were divided into experimental class and control class. In the experimental class schema-based teaching method was used, while in the control class, traditional teaching method was used as the teacher always did. Data collected from questionnaires, pre-test and post-test indicated that in this teaching framework, reading ability of students in the experimental class was improved greatly compared with the control class. The students in experimental class can use different reading strategies to read and form a good reading habit.We also get some implications from this experiment:the students and teachers should cooperate in order to improve students’reading ability. During the reading class the students should learn to apply some reading strategies and approaches. In spare time, the students may do extensive reading to enlarge linguistic schemata, content schemata and formal schemata. From teachers’perspective, they should teach students reading skills, enrich students’ background knowledge, and activate known knowledge to relate with new information.This paper has made preliminary exploration about how to use schema theory to improving English learners’reading ability. To a certain extent, the research possesses some academic and practical value. The author hopes that this study can have the positive significance for learning and teaching of reading. In this field, a lot of issues are far from being exhaustive and will await further research.