Extensive Reading Course For Rural Studies In Seventh Grade

Since1970s the artificial intelligence expert Rumelhart consummated the definition ofschemata by combining it with computer program. From then on, schema theory has beenused as the theoretical foundation of reading researches by a great deal of researchers. TheSchema Theory believes that the schemata, also called background knowledge, whichreorganizes people’s past knowledge and experience, plays an important role in the processof reading. But the correlation between the background knowledge and the languagecompetence of readers has not yet been determined. This study plans to offer Junior7inrural area extensive reading lessons, in order to assess the project feasibility, and seewhether it can improve students’ English achievements and whether it influences studentsin their language competence.This study’s subjects are from4normal classes in different schools in rural area, oneexperimental class and one control class in each school. This paper adopts qualitative aswell as quantitative researches. Questionnaire and interviews are for collecting the data ofstudents’ needs analysis of reading. We use SPSS17.0to get the description statistics, andbased on them, reading materials are selected. Then the experimental classes have theextensive reading lessons using the material selected, the control ones read the samematerials by themselves. After getting the datum of the pre-test and post-test, the datacorrelation and independent sample t-test is done by SPSS17.0, and One-Way ANOVA isdone to analyze the improvements of reading of different language ability levels. Theresults show that the experimental classes have higher mean scores than the control ones,and the t-test shows that they have significant difference; the results of One-WayANOVA show that after the extensive reading lessons the intermediate students get thelargest improvement, and then the high-competence ones, last the low-competence ones.Therefore, it is feasible to have extensive reading classes in Junior7in rural areas, and theycan improve the students’ English competence; the input of background knowledgeinfluences the intermediate students biggest. So, in the teaching process, teachers should strengthen the input of backgroundknowledge (such as social cultural knowledge) and actively instruct the students to readboth in class and out of class. In addition, teachers should pay more attention tointensifying reading supervision. For the different influences for different levels of studentsas inputting background knowledge, teachers should plan fairly for them in order toimprove the teaching quality largely.