The Application Of Schema Theory To English Reading In Senior High School In Hohhot

Reading, which acts as a main approach to attaining information, is gaining its importance in language learning. Only on the basis of reading skill can other relevant language skills be improved. Reading can cultivate your sense of language, enlarge your vocabulary, improve your writing, open your mind and get you more familiar with the foreign culture, all of which will pave the way for the further study of the English language. As is required in the New English Curriculum Standards for high school students, schools should put more emphasis on the development of students’ reading improvement. The significance of reading lies in the fact that in every year’s College Entrance Examination, reading comprehension takes up such a large proportion as to 40 percent of all the exam items.However, English language teaching in China reveals some problems. Firstly, traditional teaching method is still in the dominating position. Following the traditional method, the teachers will explain the words, phrases, sentences in detail and sometimes the teachers even translate the whole passage from English into Chinese. In consequence, the reading class is turned into language points’ explanation class. What is worse, these points are explained in an isolated way. Although educational reforms have been made, teachers seem to walk the old way in the new shoes. The cultivation of reading ability is overlooked, which is opposite to the teaching goal. Secondly, teachers lack the effective mode to follow. Therefore, exploring the new and effective way which can be applied to the reading class seems an urgent task for the teachers. In the exploration, effectiveness and appropriateness are the main concern. Now an agreement has been reached that the students-centered method should be adopted. But how to put this idea into real action remains to be settled.Therefore, what the teachers need to do is to thoroughly figure out the nature of reading process. Armed with the reading theories, teachers are likely to find the effective mode to change the current English reading class circumstances.In recent years, a lot of research has been done on reading theories. among these theories, schema theory is put under the spotlight. According to the schema theory, teachers should stimulate the students’ background knowledge. Besides, the instructors are supposed to help the students to find the relations between the old knowledge and the new knowledge. Under the guidance of the schema theory, students can set up their own new schema and their reading ability can be improved step by step.The thesis wants to solve the problem whether the application of the schema theory can have an effect on the improvement of the students’ reading ability as well as their scores in reading comprehension examination. In order to test the influence of the schema theory on reading, the author did an experiment. The experiment lasted 4 months. Two classes in Senior 1 were chosen. One was the experimental group and the other was the control group of the same level of English proficiency. In the experimental class, schema-oriented method was used. While in the control class, traditional grammar-based method was employed as usual. The research consisted of 3 parts, including pre-test, post-test and a reading-relevant experiment. The author presented the results by collecting the data and analyzing them in the two stages of pre-test and post-test. The results of the research showed that the English reading comprehension scores and abilities of the students in the experimental class had been improved more quickly than those in the control class. The schema-oriented method played an important role in the improvement of the students’ reading comprehension, following which the students’ reading ability was promoted. What was more important was that their reading habits were formed, which were beneficial and instructive for their future language learning.Due to the significant influence of schema theory on reading comprehension, the author suggested that it might be a choice for teachers to activate the students’ previous schema, establish their new schema and consolidate their own schema in their mind. The author gave a teaching design to show how to put schema theory into real teaching. At last, the author gave some advice on future English reading teaching...