A Study Of Coherence From The Schema Theory Perspective And Its Implications For Pre-reading

Coherence is a basic property of discourse, and it is also the core concept of discourse analysis. In 1976, Halliday put forward the theory of cohesion and coherence which holds that coherence is realized on the basis of cohesion and cohesion is the necessary condition for it. Some scholars think that this theory is applicable for most of discourses. Other scholars, however, find that some discourses are semantic coherence without the form of cohesion. Even if there is an abundance of the obvious markers of cohesion in a discourse, they can not guarantee the semantic coherence.Along with the development of cognitive linguistics, some linguists started paying close attention to the restraints and impacts of cognitive ability on discourse analysis. The discourse formation and understanding are a dynamic cognitive process in which readers connect the language symbols with their pre-existing background knowledge to reorganize and express information. Therefore, some linguists consider the discourse coherence and the coherent relation in discourse as a cognitive phenomenon. The schema theory, one of the most important theories of cognitive psychology, defines all the background knowledge as schema which is a world knowledge and experience stored previously in the human memory. The basic view point of schema is that discourse itself is meaningless, but the discourse just provides guidance for readers to extract and construct significance with the existing knowledge. So, the coherence is not the unique characteristics of discourse. The realization of coherence, in some sense, depends on whether the reader can activate relevant schemata or not.The thesis attempts to interpret the coherence using the schema theory and its implications. In the thesis, after introducing of the basic knowledge of coherence and schema theory, the author expounds the schema theory possesses strong interpretation power for the realization of discourse coherence and plays a positive role for diversification of discourse coherence. And finally, the thesis applies the research to practical teaching, discussing the guidance for teaching of pre-reading.The thesis consists of seven chapters. The first chapter is an introduction stating the background study of coherence, the goals, the methodology and outline of the paper. The second chapter is a literature review which reviews the study of coherence home and abroad on the issue and points out the limitations in previous research. The third chapter presents the basic knowledge of coherence including the definition, characteristics and devices to realize coherence. The forth chapter concerns the schema theory including definition, characteristics and classification of schema theory. The fifth chapter is to apply schema theory for the explanation of the coherence problem concretely and to demonstrate reasonably that this theory has positive significance in realizing discourse coherence, which is a beneficial supplement for the study of discourse coherence. The sixth chapter is about its pedagogical implications for pre-reading teaching. And finally, the conclusion of the whole paper is drawn, summing up the contents of the whole thesis, pointing out the limitations of the study, and giving suggestions for further research.