The Application Of The Schema Theory To English Reading Teaching In Rural Junior Middle Schools

According to English Curricular Standards in the Phase of Compulsory Education(2001), it was considered as one of the most important goals to promote students’ reading ability. Carrell(1987)pointed out that reading was by far the most important skill of four skills in a second language learning process for many students. However, the current situation of English reading teaching in the rural junior middle school is not all satisfying. Teachers there still take the traditional method which focuses on linguistic competence, such as grammar and vocabulary. As a consequence, it is the teacher that dominates the class. Under the guidance of this traditional method, students may lose their interest in learning English gradually and even hate English. And therefore how to arouse students’ interest and how to improve their reading ability have become the main tasks of English reading teaching.“Schema” was originally proposed by Kant(1781). Bartlett(1932) introduced the schema into the field of the psychology. He believed that the schema was an active organization of previous reaction or previous experience. According to Meng Hong(2008), the schema theory was based on the notion that people’s previous experience led to the formation of various framework patterns in the brain which helped readers to understand something new. It is widely accepted that there are three types of reading schemata: language schema, content schema and formal schema. Since 1980 s, the schema theory has been applied to our college reading teaching. Since then, a lot of relevant studies have been done and it turns out that the schema theory has shed new light on English reading teaching.In order to check whether the schema theory could be applied to English reading teaching in the rural junior middle schools, the author carried out an experiment. The author chose two parallel classes in the rural junior middle school at Huashan County, Jimo City. One class was the experimental class with 46 students, and the other was the control class with 45 students. All of the students were from the rural area. Two different methods were used in these two classes. The traditional method was used in the control class while the schema-based method was employed in the experimental class.Prior to the experiment, three research questions were put forward as follows:1. Compared with the traditional method, can the schema-based method improve students’ reading ability more effectively in the rural junior middle schools?2. Can the schema-based method stimulate students’ reading interest effectively in the rural junior middle schools ?3. In what way can the schema theory be applied to English reading teaching in the rural junior middle schools?In order to answer these three questions, the author used quantitative analysis methods in this paper. The research instruments used in this experiment were two questionnaires and two tests. The whole experiment lasted for four months and the data were analyzed through SPSS19.0.After the experiment, the author gets some data. The mean score of the post-test in the experimental class is 10.1087, while that in the control class is 7.8667. The Sig.(2-tailed) is 0.004, which is lower than 0.05. The data indicate that the application of the schema theory can improve students’ reading level more effectively.By analyzing the data between the pre-questionnaire and the post-questionnaire, the author gets the conclusion that the application of the schema theory can arouse students’ interest and confidence in reading more effectively.