Theory From The Illustrated English Reading Teaching Cultural Import

Reading is one of the most important components for English learners in high school. At present, the traditional grammar translation method is dominant in English reading teaching in our country. This model views EFL reading as a passive decoding process, but it is now facing the challenges according to the New English Curriculum Standards in China, because it can’t satisfy the demands of developing the students’ reading abilities. At the same time, reading theories abroad have developed into the integral schema model, which emphasizes the readers’ prior knowledge and personal experiences. In the reading teaching, the teachers should encourage the students consciously to apply the schemas to improve their abilities of reading comprehension.The author investigated109senior school students’ reading habits and reading difficulties with the use of questionnaire. It was found that most of students didn’t have good reading habits and had some reading difficulties in their reading. Through the investigation, we found that their English teachers neither paid much attention to pre-reading activities nor made full use of pre-reading activities to help high school students comprehend the passage:meanwhile high school students knew that background knowledge was very important for their reading but they did not know how to get background knowledge and they had weak awareness to use pre-reading activities.According to schema theory, background knowledge plays an important role in understanding the texts. The theory stresses the links between the new information and the pre-existed knowledge. We believe if a teacher inputs more cultural background knowledge to the students, it will help the students better understand the reading materials.The thesis moves from theory to practice and last arrives at the conclusion that the mistakes should definitely be avoided if students possess adequate cultural background knowledge and cross-cultural awareness.