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

This thesis is an experimental research on the application of schema theory to English reading teaching in junior middle schools.When it comes to English learning in junior middle schools,reading is considered to be the most significant way of mastering this subject.Thus,English reading teaching in junior middle schools accordingly plays a vital part in English teachers' daily life.Moreover,reading is a very crucial approach to obtaining information in the world,and it is one of the most important ways to learn English well.One of the teaching aims in classroom reading is to improve students' reading abilities.Teachers have been trying their best to find effective ways to achieve this goal for many years.Teachers are used to applying the Grammar Translation Approach to help students improve their reading comprehension.To some extent,this traditional method has had some advantages for a long time.But as the society develops and the students change,we are now in a physically and mentally different world.Many scholars and experts have pointed out and criticized the limitations of the traditional English reading teaching in junior middle schools.Teachers should also meet the needs of the New Curriculum Standards and the actual needs of the students.According to the New Curriculum Standards,middle school students ought to meet requirements of five aspects: 1)they should be able to find the main idea of the text.2)They should understand the plot of the text.3)They should understand how the text is organized.4)They should guess the end of the text.5)They should understand the reading materials of common genres.To adapt to the new changes in real teaching,some scholars have put forward some new ways of teaching English reading.Each method has its own strengths and weaknesses.Every approach has been applied in a different situation and learners.In this study,the author will try to teach English reading from the perspective of schema theory,which contains three aspects-the language schema,content schema and form schema.The theory will be applied in a new environment,in order to see what effects it will have on students' reading performance.Although front-line teachers have been learning new ways of teaching,not all of them are treated systematically in this area.And not all of them are using a certain theory to guide their teaching procedures from preparing their teaching plans to the implementation of real classes.Considering the situation and according to the textbook,this research explores the effect of reading approach based on schema theory to English reading teaching in middle schools.It is hoped that this research can provide new ideas and thoughts about English reading for both students and teachers.The author did this research in Fei Junlong Middle School(a rural middle school in a developed city)in Kunshan.Students in Class 5 and Class 3 from Grade 8 were chosen as the experimental subjects.This research focuses on the following questions:(1)In the senior year of Middle School,when a new method based on schema theory is applied to reading teaching,what effects will it have on students' reading scores in the tests?(2)What effects will it have on students' interest in English reading after adopting this method?(3)After adopting this method,how will it affect students' scores except reading in English tests?In order to solve these problems,the author adopted the experimental method in which process the experimental instruments such as pre-test and post-test comparative,classroom experiment,interviews survey were also used.The experiment lasted for three months from the late October 2016 to the early January of 2017.Before this experiment,the author did a survey on students' reading habits,their interest in English reading,their missing scores on reading and their cognitive level on reading teaching.Next were the test papers,which were chosen from the mid-term exam and the final examination,designed by the education instructor in Suzhou.The question patterns of pre-test were the same as the post-test,the criteria of the two tests were the same,too.Thus we could insure its reliability and validity to distinguish students in their comprehensive application competence.The author also collected the data of the two classes and then put them in the computer.Another aid the author used was to interview some of the students and teachers before and during the experiment to get necessary information and feedback.At the end of the experiment,the author got all the scores(in total and partial)with the help of the computer and analyzed all the experimental data with a tool called Minitab17.0.According to the overall results,the author drew a conclusion that both of the two classes were promoted in reading scores because the mean scores of EC increased by 4.6 and scores of CC increased by1.92.That is to say,after executing purposely of the schema theory in reading teaching,reading scores of the students got improved.But when we referred to the comparison of CC in pre and post tests,the result of T-test was P equaled to 0.156,which was higher than 0.05,so the author confirmed that its improvement was not obvious.Whereas the data of EC was 0.001 which was lower than 0.05.We say it gets obvious promotion.Another result of the research revealed that the scores except reading didn't get improved obviously.That is to say,although the SR was promoted in the process,the scores except reading couldn't get synchronous improvement.After the research,the author reached such conclusions:(1)By interviewing the students before and during the experiment,their interest in learning English reading was higher than before;(2)Through executing the Schema Theory in EC,the results of the scores were more obvious than CC after three months' experiment,which means this method could improve students' reading ability;(3)Although this method has obvious effects on students' reading performance,it couldn't have much effect on other parts of one's learning skills.