An Experimental Study On English Reading Teaching Based On Schema Theory In Senior Middle School

Reading plays an important role in English teaching in senior middle school.However,the present English learning and teaching situation is that English teaching can only focus on words,sentences and grammar knowledge and then translating the whole reading material sentence by sentence,rather than training students' reading skills,which causes the lack of the background knowledge and corresponding schema knowledge.Therefore,reading comprehension is a great obstacle students have to face.The author,through teaching experiment and questionnaire survey,carried out a four-month experimental research in her classes,trying to integrate schema theory into reading teaching.The new teaching method based on schema theory is used for improving the effectiveness of reading comprehension and the reading abilities of students in senior middle school.And on this basis,two questions are to be answered in the present thesis: Firstly,can Schema theory applied to English reading help students to improve their performance of English reading comprehension in senior middle school? Secondly,Can Schema theory applied to English reading teaching help students raise their interest in English learning?Before the experiment,the author conducted a pre-test in class 14 and 15,grade 3 in Gao Yao NO.1 Middle School in Zhao Qing city,with the purpose of knowing the reading situation in both of the two classes and making preparations for the following teaching experiment.During the next four months,the control class(class 15)will be taught in the normal way while in the experimental class(class 14)schema theory will be applied to instruct reading teaching activities,including pre-reading activities,while-reading activities and post-reading activities.After the experiment,the author had a post-test in both the control class and the experimental class to testify the effectiveness of the research experiment.The results of the tests were analysed on SPSS 19.0 for independent samples t-tests and paired sample t-tests.The thesis has got two main findings: Firstly,schema theory applied to English reading can help students improve their performance of English reading comprehension in senior middle school.Secondly,schema theory applied to English reading teaching can help students raise their interest in English learning.Through this research experiment,the author got some hints for reading teaching.First,teachers should go on with enriching students' language knowledge,especially vocabulary.Of course the teachers should also help students have a knowledge of sentence structures and grammar rules.Second,the teachers should introduce some relevant cultural background knowledge to the students to broaden their horizons.Third,the teachers should instruct the students to get familiar with different types of writings,widely read various kinds of articles and gradually foster the needed reading skills.