| The four basic skills of English learning, i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing, are interrelated, interacted, interdependent and promoted mutually. English for senior high school, on the basis of the essential activities of listening, speaking, reading and writing, aims to develop the comprehensive language skills of students and their ability of communicating in English. The study in senior high school focuses on the cultivation of reading ability, while enhancing the training on listening and reading. However, for a student in senior high school, in view of the essential English knowledge and reading materials which were learned and accumulated in junior high school, some writing trainings are essential to foster the writing skills.English Curriculum Standards of Compulsory Education for Senior High School highlights the requirements on training the students’ comprehensive ability to use English. To train students to have the ability of writing in English is one of the purposes of English teaching. Writing, requiring students to have solid essential language skills as well as ability of understanding, imagining, expressing and assessing, can reflect the language application ability of a student in different ways and thence share a large percentage in the college entrance examination. Students in Grade3of senior high school should be capable of making sentences within the scope of the language learnt and writing a passage composed of100words or around when instructive words are provided; and meanwhile, the meaning expressed by such sentences and paragraphs must be coherent and no grammar error is found. Moreover, the college entrance examination syllabus outlines clear requirements on writing, namely, the criteria of what the examinees are expected to do in writing in English. In recent years, the college entrance examinations in different areas have raised higher requirements on writing; which have accordingly raised more rigorous requirements on the teaching of English writing for English teachers in senior high school. As the English teaching in senior high school is under further reform, the teaching of English writing in senior high school raises much stricter requirements on English writing ability of students. Therefore, English writing is the indispensable component of the English examination paper of the college entrance examination and an integral part of English learning in senior high school.English Curriculum Standards of Compulsory Education for Senior High School highlights stricter and stricter requirements on English writing, but it is by no means impossible to meet such requirements in the writing practice. However, according to the score appraisal results for writing in the English examination paper of the college entrance examination of every province and municipality throughout China, the scoring rate was very low. Most of students could finish a composition in English in accordance with the given requirements, but their compositions were usually accompanied with multiple problems, such as unclear expression of thoughts, Chinglish and etc. Moreover, certain grammar errors emerged frequently in their writings. So it can be seen the English writing ability of students in senior high school in China is not optimistic. Senior high school students are not good at English writing; students’personal reasons can cause such a situation, but it is related with the problems which occurred in the teaching process in senior high school. Currently there are many research achievements for English writing teaching, but the current situation of the English writing teaching in senior high school of China is still not optimistic. Obviously, no matter for the students or the English teachers in senior high school, the English writing, undoubtedly, is a subject hard to surmount.Schema, the original meaning of which is "image and appearance", was derived from the ancient Greek and was found firstly in the theoretical works of Immanuel Kant, the famous philosopher of Germany. In the eyes of Kant, schema was a perceptual structural principle and structural pattern. In1932, Erederick Bartlett, the famous cognitive psychologist, applied the concept of "schema" into modern psychology study. In his opinion, the memorial discourse was only the interpretation-based reestablishment, rather than the direct duplication. Professor Piaget, the famous educator and psychologist in Switzerland, attached importance to the schema concept, and believed that schema was not born or inherent, indicating the organization or structure of action. In Professor Piaget’s schema theory, the adaptation and the assimilation stood for the interaction of subject and object and are the two core concepts in the cognition development course. The former showed the process of the subject reforming under the interaction of the object; while the latter showed the process that the object was reformed by the subject.The modern schema theory was developed after1976, and Rumelhart (1980), the representative of this theory, believes that the schema theory explained how the knowledge of a person was represented and how knowledge representation improved knowledge application in a special way. Meanwhile, Rumelhart regarded schema as the interactive knowledge structure and compared it to "the building block that constitutes cognitive ability". In psychology, the study on the cognitive ability of people gets profound changes due to the joining of computer science and information science. The big difference between the modern schema theory and Piaget theory is that the modern schema theory thinks schema has a certain mental structure network and is formed by interacting and interrelating various elements of knowledge. The development of schema can be realized through restructuring, coordination, addition, adaption, assimilation and other ways.The core of the schema theory is to connect a new thing with known background knowledge. From the viewpoints of Piaget, it was not a passive process when a learner received external influence, but an active learning process; that is, a learner was active to get interaction with the environment, In this process, a learner’s adaption and assimilation resulted in the change in the interior scheme-cognition structure of an individual and finally got equilibrium. From the viewpoints of Kant, when a person received new information, new concepts or new thoughts, they are meaningful when they are associated with the existing knowledge in his/her brain. Writing is a process that the author uses the existing cognition and language knowledge in his/her brain to make creation in accordance with the given tasks and requirements, namely the process to use the existing schema in his/her brain to create new schema. In a sense, writing is a process to acquire information, process information and export information. Provided that a student is very familiar with the information involved in the writing task, he/she may enjoy fluent language output. Therefore, provided that teachers provide the relevant background knowledge to activate or call the schema that exists in students’ brain and make students become familiar with the contents and information of the composition task and the language pattern for expression before writing a composition, the student will accordingly reduce their cognitive load and enjoy smoother language output later.In accordance with schema theory, the size of schema knowledge is positively proportional to the writing success rate of a student. Usually the writing process experiences three stages, namely concept formation stage (i.e.:in which content schema is formed), form synthesis stage (i.e.:in which formal schema is formed) and language expression stage (i.e.:in which language schema is formed); the success of writing depends on the size of the three kinds of schema knowledge (i.e.:content schema, formal schema and language schema) available in the brain of students. Content schema refers to the relevant content or information, i.e.:what shall be written; formal schema refers to the discourse structure, i.e.:how is a discourse organized; language schema refers to the language or the language knowledge that shall be used when discussing an issue, i.e.:what language forms shall be used. In the writing process, the three kinds of schema knowledge available in the brain of students may interact with each other, and none is dispensable. Activation of content schema can push the author to make a clear and comprehensive writing plan; after the writing plan forms, the author needs to call on the knowledge of discourse structure from formal schema so as to form an integral writing outline and finally use accurate words and phrases and correct grammar knowledge to let the writing outline come into being through words. If an author is not able to access language schema well, even he/she has a very good writing plan, his/her composition, after it is completed, may be full of errors.According to the research achievements of many scholars and teaching staffs at home and abroad, schema theory has very important impact on English reading and English listening. As regards the relations between schema theory and English reading teaching, English listening teaching, scholars and teaching staffs at home and abroad have made plenty of researches, and have obtained plentiful and substantial achievements. However, only a few of them focus on the relations between schema theory and English writing teaching, most of which focus on the English writing teaching in universities.By looking up relevant books and acquiring information at home and abroad, the author made comprehensive understanding on the English writing in senior high school, schema and schema theory.As for English writing in senior high school, the author found, by now, many scholars of China had studied English writing in senior high school and writing teaching. For instance, Huang Zicheng (2004) discussed the current situation and strategy of English writing in senior high school, and pointed out that to develop and improve writing ability is a very important task for English teaching; however, in fact many teaching activities were not realized. He analyzed further the reasons why such phenomena occurred and raised some feasible strategies. Cao Lingyi (2006) proposed to use teaching materials in a creative way so as to improve the English writing ability of students. From her viewpoints, the teaching materials in the new century feature in rich subject matters, large information and vocabulary; therefore teachers must focus on the features and contents of the teaching materials, and use the teaching materials in a creative way to improve the English writing ability of students through appropriate teaching methods. Dai Shiying (2007) discussed the English writing in senior high school too. Based on the requirements of The National English Curriculum Standards For General High School (Experimental) on English writing teaching in senior high school, she analyzed the existing problems in English writing teaching, highlighted to enhance the training on the essential language skills of students, and proposed to improve the English writing level and ability of students fundamentally by training the writing skills of students through discourse teaching and focusing on the in-process writing. Wang Junju (2007) made research and discussion in terms of the cognitive psychological process of second language writing. Namely she researched the cognitive psychological process of second language writing on research contents, method design, research results, concept definition and others, including the general writing process of second language writing, relations between writing ability and second language writing, comparison on native language writing and second language writing process, role of native language and translation in the second language writing process, learning strategy and second language writing process, cognitive psychological process of Chinese students in second language writing and etc.As for schema and schema theory, the author found many scholars abroad had made certain related researches so far; for instance, Cook (1992) said that "the schema is the high-grade and complicated structure accumulated over a long period, and reflects the classical scene in brain." Cook defined schema as an integral part of human brain and a knowledge organization; Widdowson (1979) deemed the schema to be a cognition architecture, where information is stored in memory orderly for a long time, and provides basis for prediction. Relative to the researches abroad on schema and schema theory, the relevant researches made in China were conducted later and less, and some of them were still at the exploratory stage and focused on only theoretic research, and lack guiding significance for practice.As for the relations between schema theory and English writing in senior high school, the author found the research on the application of schema theory in English teaching practice was increasing gradually in recent years; for instance, Zhang Zhihua (2008), by integrating schema theory with English listening teaching, proposed the feasible English listening level improvement strategy; Wang Mei (2008) used schema theory in English reading teaching, even discussed the issue how to efficiently employ the schema theory to improve English reading level in sense of the three stages of reading. However, the author found there were not many researches on the application of schema theory to English writing teaching in senior high school, and all of them were still at the theory establishment stage. For instance, Dai Jia (2009) discussed the relations between schema theory and English writing and teaching:from her viewpoints, schema is the premise of English writing. On the contrary, the latter is the result of the former; thus the close relation between schema theory and English writing is well verified theoretically.Upon the long-time experience and practice in English teaching of senior high school, the author has found that schema theory, in all probability, can be applied in English writing teaching. No matter it is English reading or English writing, they have close relation with the schema established by students in their early English learning process. Schema reflects not only the past experience, but also an active development pattern (Bartlett,1932). In the framework of the schema theory, writing is the two-way interaction process between information input and schema. The English writing of Chinese students is actually a kind of foreign language writing; therefore, there are two schemas in their writing process, namely, Chinese schema and English schema. From the viewpoint of the author, as for English writing teaching, it is very important to avoid or reduce the negative influence of Chinese schema and enhance the active influence of English schema.Therefore, by summing up the viewpoints of our predecessors, the author hopes to seek an easily operable, more specific and more comprehensive writing teaching method by applying schema theory to English writing teaching in senior high school through empirical study, and then further verify the fact that the schema theory is very helpful for improving the English writing ability of senior high school students. From selecting the subject to starting the research, the author used the following research methods, namely literature research method, survey analysis method, and empirical research method.(1) Literature research method:in accordance with the research purpose of the paper——to apply schema theory in English writing teaching in senior high school to further verify that schema theory is very helpful to improve the English writing ability of senior high school students, the author acquired information, data and theoretic basis by sorting out and analyzing books, newspapers, network reports, periodicals collected through various channels and means to comprehensively and correctly seize the research problems, and then sufficiently implement the comprehensive search on the relations between schema theory and English writing of senior high school;(2) Survey analysis method:after determining the experimental purpose and contents of empirical research, before starting experiment, in order to guarantee the implementation feasibility of experiment, and make the experimental result more scientific and convincing, the author got to know the English writing status quo of senior high school students through the investigation, namely, the questionnaire survey on designated students (students who participate in the later experiment) based on the conclusion obtained from the existing literatures, made statistics for data of investigation results, analyzed the reasons of such status quo, and integrated them with schema theory to lay solid basis for the later empirical research:(3) Experimental method:it is a particular form of the scientific practice research. The core contents of the paper is to verify that schema theory can authentically help senior high school students to improve their English writing ability; therefore according to the existing scientific theory and practice needs, the author set down the experimental objects, prepared the experimental materials, and relied on the purposed and step-by-step operations to observe the change in data before and after experiment through observation, recording, testing and other ways, and then utilized the data to verify that schema theory can be efficiently applied to English writing teaching of senior high school and improve students’English writing ability fundamentally.The author discussed the main research contents through the following six parts: Part1:Analysis on the research background and significance, research status quo, research method and research content.Part2:The current situation of English writing of senior high school students and English writing teaching.In this part, the author elaborates the importance of the English writing in senior high school, and then clarifies the English writing status of senior high school students and the English writing teaching. In the statement of such status quo, this paper stresses the problems of students’writing and teachers’teaching, and analyzes the possible reasons. Finally, the questionnaire survey aims at knowing the status quo of English writing of senior high school students, analyzing the result data and seeking the latent reasons. At the meantime, the questionnaire survey is the premise of experiment and lays the solid basis for feasible experimental operation and scientific results.Part3:Schema theory and writing.In this part, the author introduces the definition of schema theory firstly, narrates the establishment of three schema forms, namely, language schema, content schema and formal schema secondly, and analyzes the relations between schema theory and English writing lastly.Part4:It focuses on the application of schema theory to English writing teaching in senior high school.This part is composed of the writing teaching contents and writing teaching process. The former focuses on the further discussion on the implications of using schema theory in English writing teaching of senior high school by proposing the methods capable of helping students to establish classified schema forms and guiding students to activate existing schema; while the latter emphasizes the specific operation steps of applying schema theory to English writing teaching in senior high school.Part5:The empirical research on the English writing teaching in senior high school under schema theory.This part is the core of the paper. Centering on the experiment, the part shows the experimental questions, subjects, materials, process and results. For experimental process, it focuses on the description of the comparison between the experimental group and the control group. For the experimental shift, its English writing teaching mode focuses on the schema training, namely the thought of "establishing writing task-classroom-based schema training-students’writing-teachers’commenting" however for the control shift, its English writing teaching mode focuses on the way of "establishing writing task-students’ writing-teachers’correcting students’ compositions in vocabulary, grammar and other aspects". In fact, the latter is a conventional teaching method. The experimental results provide powerful support for our theoretical hypothesis, namely schema theory can be effectively applied to English writing teaching in high school. In fact, this is the effective method to improve the English writing ability of senior high school students.Part6:The conclusion and prospect.This part sums up the key points of the paper, discusses the limitations of the present research, and proposes expectations on future researches. |
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