The Application Of Content Schemata And Formal Schemata To The Teaching Of English Reading In Senior High School

Reading plays an important part in high School, the teaching goal of which is tohelp students improve their reading ability. However, the present situation is not verypromising. Take the school where the author works, for example, most English teachersfocus on teaching linguistic knowledge only, such as grammar, vocabulary, pattern drillsthroughout the classroom activity, As for students, reading is merely for knowing words,but not for getting the message. Guided with education theory, or rather schema theory,the author has undertaken an experiment for one semester with one class where schematheory is applied, and the other one where teaching is done in a traditional way so as tosee whether the reading class conducted with schema theory can do a better job.Schema has three categories---language schema, content schema and form schema.Language schema refers to the basic knowledge of English learning. Content schemarefers to the background knowledge about the topic of an article. Form schema refers tothe textual knowledge or genre knowledge. While doing the experiment, the author firsthelps students get ready before doing the reading text by activating the schema strategiesin students from different perspectives accordingly; then, asks students to practice thestrategies so as to get things done either by themselves or with some help from the teacher.As a result, students reasoning and summarizing ability is cultivated with three types ofschema interacting and influencing each other, and their comprehensive reading abilityis improving as expected.It turns out that the findings of the research echo the author’s assumptions thatschema theory really can do a good job in the enhancement of reading ability ofstudents. But the mistaken way of teaching, which, unfortunately, still dominates inreading class of most high schools, is, at least in part, to blame for students’ poorreading ability to some extent. It is a pity that the time for the experiment is not longenough to make it more convincing.