An Empirical Study Of L2 Reading Ability Training Based On The Input And Output Hypothesis And Schema Theory

Reading ability is the competence to understand what one is reading.Reading skills are an effective measure of one’s understanding of reading materials.Thus,reading skills are regarded as both significant and practical techniques to assess one’s reading ability.Both The Syllabus of CET-4 & CET-6(Revised 2016)and The Syllabus of CET-4(Revised 2006)suggest that reading skills used to evaluate one’s reading ability include identifying new lexical items,grasping detailed information,drawing inferences from the text,understanding the writer’s view,and comprehending the main idea from the text.The Input and Output Hypothesis and Schema Theory can be applied to L2 reading.Reading through Writing(RtW)is based on The Input and Output Hypothesis and is effective for raising L2 learners’ reading ability.Schemata are based on Schema Theory and operate as a knowledge structure to aid in prediction,selection,and integration tasks for L2 learners.The present study aims to reveal how the two strategies affect the five reading skills,and how they can be applied to teaching L2 reading.This study explores the following three research questions:1.With regard to L2 learners,which reading skills benefit from the application of RtW?2.With regard to L2 learners,which reading skills benefit from the application of Schemata?3.What are the implications of this research in advancing the teaching of L2 reading?The study involved 116 first-year students in Jiangsu University of Science and Technology,split into RtW and Schema groups.The two groups were asked to use the same reading materials to complete different sets of tasks.After 16 weeks,SPSS 22.0 was used to compare the results from the post-test with the corresponding results from the pretest.Among the five reading skills,in the RtW Group the t-values of understanding the writer’s view,identifying new lexical items,and comprehending the main idea from the text were-3.129,-2.847,and-2.439;in the Schema Group the t-values of drawing inferences from the test,identifying new lexical items,and grasping detailed information were-4.826,-4.219,and-3.665.It can be concluded that RtW is effective in raising L2 learners’ reading skills of understanding the writer’s view,identifying new lexical items,and comprehending the main idea from the text.Schemata are effective in the reading skills of drawing inferences from the test,identifying new lexical items,and grasping detailed information.Therefore,in relation to teaching L2 reading,this study has the following suggestions.Firstly,when teaching L2 reading instructors can combine techniques such as summary,commentary,adaptation,and continuation based on RtW to improve L2 learners’ reading awareness of the text as a whole.In addition,tasks such as prediction,selection,and integration based on Schemata can be applied to improve L2 learners’ reading comprehension of the details from the text.A combination of these two strategies could lead to a general improvement in the teaching of L2 reading.