The Application Of Schema Theory To The Junior Middle School English Reading Teaching In A Foreign Language School

With the development of the society,English which is considered as a global language plays a major role in daily communication and business.More and more people are aware of the importance of the learning of English.In the course of English learning,students should improve and master four basic skills which are essential for the learning of English.Listening,speaking,reading and writing are considered as the four basic skills in the learning of English.In the process of teaching English,the teaching aim is to enhance students' skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing and make a full achievements of the all-round development of the four skills.The ability of reading is of essential importance.Because it is the most effective way for students to know and store knowledge of English.The ability of reading could be improved through some proper teaching of English reading.So most teachers pay much attention to the teaching of English reading.However,under some influence of the traditional teaching of English reading,teachers pay more attention to teach some knowledge of grammar and sentence structure,but ignore the application and accumulation of some background knowledge and cultural differences.This directly affects not only the improvement of students' reading strategy,but also the improvement of students' reading ability.In order to improve the teaching method of English reading and create a more efficient reading class,the author tries to introduce the Schema theory into the teaching of English reading for junior students and carries on a four-month empirical study.Two parallel classes from Chengdu Experimental Foreign Language School are chosen as the subjects of the experiment.One class is called the experimental class,the other class is called the controlled class.At the beginning of the experiment,the author willinvestigate the current situation of English reading including students' interest in reading,their reading frequency and their method or skills of reading through the questionnaires.In the experimental class,the teaching method of English reading is guided by the Schema Theory so as to cultivate students' reading strategies.The following aspects should be paid attention to in the course of teaching: Firstly,prepare and activate the schema,in other words,the author guides the students to use their prior knowledge to obtain information before reading.Secondly,establish and enrich the schema,that is,the author guides the students to improve their reading skills through some reading activities while reading.Thirdly,accumulate and consolidate the schema,that is,the author guides the students to sort out the schema which has been established after reading.On the other hand,the controlled class is taught reading with the traditional way of English reading teaching.After four months,the students of the two classes take part in a test of reading and the results will be collected and analyzed.The students of the experimental class will make more progress in the reading compared with the students of the controlled class.At the end of the experiment,the author will do another investigation through questionnaires.The author finds out that students of the experimental class show more interest in English reading and they would like to do reading more often than before with some reading strategies.From the experimental data,the application of schema theory has some effective function and should be widely used in the teaching of English reading.