The Application Of Schema Theory In The Teaching Of Spoken English In Senior High Schools

English speaking is one of the most important components of Senior High School Englishteaching and learning. It also plays an important role in the Senior High School students learning.However, in the history of English teaching in China, we have not attached much importance toEnglish speaking. So the result of English speaking is not satisfying. For English teachers,speaking teaching has been perplexing them for a long time. And for English learners in SeniorHigh School, the teaching of speaking in the English class in China is supposed to be the mostdifficult course. This consequence is caused by just focusing attention on the word and sentenceteaching in spoken language teaching in senior middle schools, ignoring the oral discourseproduction and oral discourse understanding.Schema theory is an outstanding theory that has a profound effect on the receptive skills ofreading and listening and productive skills of speaking and writing. However, previous teachingmodels based on schema theory mainly stress the importance of the prior knowledge in readingand listening, neglecting its impact on speaking and writing.In view of the above situation, and on the basis of schema theory as well as speaking theory,this study attempts to apply schema theory to the teaching of spoken English, aiming to improvestudents oral output by helping them to construct linguistic, formal and content schemata besideslearning grammatically correct sentences by heart. In order to justify the role that schema theoryplays in the teaching of spoken English and explores effective ways to improve students spokenEnglish, the author conducts a questionnaire survey, an experiment, two tests----a pre-test and apost-test, and an interview.104students come from two classes in Grade1of the No.2middleschool of Lanzhou are chosen as subjects of the research.The research was done as follows. To start with, a questionnaire survey is conducted by theauthor to collect information about the students attitudes towards the speaking skill and somefactors affecting the improvement of it. Then, a pre-test on spoken English is held. Next, anexperiment which applies schema theory to the teaching of spoken English is carried out in theexperimental class. At the completion of the experiment, the subjects in both classes are organizedto take a post-test to see whether the subjects in the experimental class have made more progressin their spoken English after a term s study and whether schema theory contributes to theimprovement of their speaking ability. And eventually, an interview is done with20subjects in the experimental class to investigate the bearings schema theory has on the improvement of theirspoken English as well as their speaking strategies.From the data analysis of the pre-test and the post-test, we can see that the experimental classmade more rapid progress than the control class, revealing that schema theory can be applied toimprove the speaking ability of the students and that construction and activation of linguisticschemata, formal schemata and content schemata have positive effects on the students betterperformance in their spoken English.Some pedagogical implications for the teaching of spoken English are drawn from theresearch. To ensure the students better performance in a speaking task, the teachers shouldemphasize the creation, modification and activation of the students schemata of differentcategories. Efficient ways should be adopted so that the students speaking ability can beimproved, such as stressing pre-speaking preparations, designing proper and practical activities,enlarging the students vocabulary and encouraging students extensive reading and listening.Hopefully, this study will cast light on the teaching of spoken English in the senior middle schoolsof China.