An Experimental Study On Junior High School English Unit Theme-based Writing Teaching Under The Guidance Of Schema Theory

The English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education(2022 Edition)began to establish core competency as the curriculum objective,of which language ability is the first and basic literacy.Writing is the most important indicator to measure English language ability and the best way to improve students’ English subject core competencies.The new curriculum standard advocates unit teaching based on thematic inquiry.In recent years,unit theme-based writing has gradually attracted the attention of scholars,and they have tried to explore it using different teaching theories and methods,with some success.However,there are still problems with the current teaching of English unit thematic writing in junior high schools: lack of integration of unit thematic discourse and coherence of the teaching process,isolation of writing teaching;lack of process guidance,etc.Students have difficulty understanding and grasping thematic meanings,and their writing skills are slow to improve.Schema is a cognitive structure stored in the human brain that helps students understand new information and activate and construct new knowledge by making connections between old and new knowledge.This study attempts to integrate schema theory with the process approach,and proposes a “six-step process writing” method,emphasizing helping students better activate and construct thematic schemata in the writing process,and successfully complete the writing,with a view to improving students’ writing proficiency in terms of content,language and formal schema.This study focuses on two research questions:1)What effects does unit theme-based writing teaching under the guidance of schema theory have on students’ writing proficiency?2)What effects does unit theme-based writing teaching under the guidance of schema theory have on the writing proficiency of students at different levels?In this experiment,89 students from two parallel classes in Grade 1 of a junior high school in Guangzhou were selected for the study: 45 in the experimental class,using the six-step process writing teaching,44 in the control class,using the original process writing teaching.The teaching period was 12 weeks.SPSS 27.0 was used to analyze the results of the two writing proficiency tests(pre-test and post-test),to verify the effectiveness of schema theory in guiding English unit theme-based writing teaching in junior high school,and a semi-structured interview was conducted to examine students’ attitudes towards this teaching method.The findings are as follows: 1)Unit theme-based writing teaching under the guidance of schema theory was conducive to improving students’ writing proficiency,with the most significant improvement in content richness,followed by writing fluency and linguistic accuracy respectively.2)Unit theme-based writing teaching under the guidance of schema theory has different effects on the writing proficiency of students at different levels.High level students showed significant improvement in content and structure,while middle and low level students made significant progress in content,language and structure.Based on the results of semi-structured interviews,students recognized the positive effects of the new teaching method and showed positive improvements in their attitudes to writing.This study provides some pedagogical reference for future unit thematic writing.