A Study Of Application Of Schema Theory To Teaching English Reading In Senior High School

Reading is no doubt the most essentialskill for students.Teaching reading is one of the hottest topics in basic education and much attention has been paid to it by educators and scholars at home and abroad.However,there are numerous problems with teaching English reading in our senior high school.Because of being influenced by the method of traditional teaching reading,many teachers only pay much attention to teaching words,sentences and grammar in English lessons,but they ignore the overall grasp of textual meaning and then let students to finish the homework.Teachers put no emphasis on students' prior knowledge and text structure.Under this reading model,students in senior high school have low reading efficiency and bad reading initiative.In view of this,the author believes that it is important to enhance students' reading comprehension and reading interest.The author had a four-month work placement with XinXiang No.1 High School in Henan Province,since September,2016.It's been observed that students are passive in English reading class and the teaching effect is quite inefficient.Therefore,the author made careful investigations of the main problems and difficulties in teaching English reading through questionnaire and analyzed some reasons of them through interviews.Based on the related data of investigations and tests,Schema Theory and interactive reading model,the author proposes the hypotheses that the method of schema-oriented teaching reading can improve students' reading abilities,and chooses Two Classes that are control class and experimental class as research subjects.Schema Theory was used to guide the interactive reading model in the experimental class;the traditional translation method was sustained in the control class.The author conducts action research,aiming to study the its effect on English reading.Research questions are as follows:(1)What kinds of problems and difficulties lie in teaching English reading?(2)What are the main causes for these problems and difficulties in teaching English reading?(3)Is Schema Theory helpful to improve students' abilities in English reading?The research results show:(1)Numerous problems are found by the author in the thesis: Students have no positive motivations of English reading,and do not form good habits of English reading.They also do not master and apply the skills of English reading.At the same time,they have a low level of reading.(2)the traditional teaching method and low level reading abilities make students have no strong motivations of English reading.Excessive academic pressure,no positive attitude towards English reading and unable to choose proper English reading materials make students do not form better habits of reading.The teacher does not teach students the knowledge of reading skills.Due to lack of content schema and formal schema,students have a low reading abilities.Students can only understand the literal meaning,but they have much difficulties in estimating and inferring the literal meaning.(3)The method of schema-oriented teaching reading can strengthen students' reading interests to arouse their enthusiasm for involvement and learn the knowledge of English and reading,and then improve their reading abilities to make progress in English reading.