Application Of Schema Theory In English Reading Teaching Of Senior Middle School

Reading, listening, writing and speaking are considered as the four basic language skills.Reading takes a very significant position in English learning. It is an important way forstudents to learn about the outside world and acquire knowledge. Through reading studentscan enlarge their vocabulary and become familiar with the background knowledge of a givenculture. Reading takes a large proportion in the NMET, and the top task for teachers in seniormiddle schools is to improve their students’ reading ability. Therefore, more and moreattention and efforts have been paid on English reading teaching and the cultivation ofstudents’ reading competence. However, due to the negative influence of traditional teachingmethods, many teachers misunderstand the task of reading comprehension. As a result, theirstudents only focus on learning vocabulary, grammatical rules and other linguistic knowledge.The result is not so satisfactory. So it is urgent for us to find out an effective teaching methodto train the students’ reading ability.“Schema” as a term in cognitive psychology was first proposed by Kant in1781. Sincethen it has gradually become one of the most popular teaching theories in EFL/ESL. Previousresearches on schema theory in reading teaching at home and abroad had an important impacton current English reading teaching. On the basis of previous achievements in the theory ofreading, the author carefully designed and implemented an experiment based on schematheory.The main purpose of this study is to try to improve the students’ reading ability in seniormiddle schools by using the schema-oriented teaching method. The author carried out anexperimental study in Luoyang No.59Senior High School which was conducted from Sep.2013to Jan.2014. Two parallel classes in Grade Two were selected as the subjects in this experiment. One was chosen as the experimental class(EC) in which reading was taughtbased on schema theory; the other was the control class(CC) in which the traditionalteaching method was used as usual.Four hypotheses are put forward by the author before the experiment:(1). The application of the Schema Theory whether feasible. It can be applied in seniormiddle schools.(2). The students’ reading ability can be improved under the guidance of Schema Theory.The student can be an effective reader after the application of Schema Theory.(3). The students’ reading speed can be improved by predicting the main idea accordingto the title and sub-title of the text, headlines, keywords and the structure.(4). The Schema Theory can arouse the students’ interest in reading comprehension. Andit can help them to form a good reading habit.To verify the hypotheses, a comparative experiment was carried out according to theprocedures step by step, including Pre-Questionnaire, Pre-test, Post-test, Post-Questionnaireand Post-Interview. The experiment lasted for4months, all the data and information werecollected and analyzed with the help of SPSS19.0software.After the experiment, the author got the mean score in EC was21.6153and the meanscore in CC was20.5097. The data of the experiment proved the hypotheses of the authorbefore the experiment. The experiment indicates the feasibility of schema theory in Englishreading teaching, and it has great importance to the reading teaching in senior middle schools.