The Application Of Schema Theory In Reading Comprehension

The development of reading ability has always been one of the primary objectives in English language teaching. Thus a large number of researches have been probed into its nature and characteristics. Currently, one of the prevailing perspectives toward the analysis of reading process is the schema theory. This thesis is attempting to expound on the application of schema theory in reading comprehension courses and it will focus on three research questions:1 How are the schemata being activated?2 What kinds of schemata are involved in the reading comprehension?3 How to help the readers to construct schemata in order to facilitate reading comprehension?After we brush up the study on the models of reading process, three major models are often cited: the bottom-up model, the top-down model and the interactive model. Correspondingly, the activation of schemata is basically through two ways, the data-driven process and the conceptually -driven process. The data-driven process is similar to the bottom-up process in reading comprehension; likewise the conceptually-driven process is close to the top-down process. And it has been widely accepted that the interactive model is more scientific than the other two, thus, we should view the activation of the schemata in an interactive way which involves both the data-driven from the bottom and the conceptually driven from the top. This similar processing sheds great light on the application of schemata in the reading comprehension. Attention should be paid to the schemata in different levels, say , the lexical level, the syntactic level and the textual level etc.According to Rumelhart, schema can represent knowledge at all levels from ideologies and cultural truths to knowledge about the meaning of a particular word, to knowledge about what patterns of excitations are associated with what letters of the alphabet. We have schemata to represent all levels of our experience, at all levels of abstraction. Finally, our schemata are our knowledge. All of our generic knowledge is embedded in schema. Therefore, schemata in reading can be generally classified into two kinds: the linguistic schemata and the content schemata. The former refer to the lexical, syntactic and textual knowledge. With the development of the research in discourse analysis, more and more attention has been paid to genres, text patterns and other textual knowledge, which also occupy an important position in this thesis. The content schemata are about reader's world knowledge, former experience etc. As to the EFL readers, the most important thing is about the cultural knowledge, which is gradually accumulated by the immersion in the foreign culture. In addition, some schemata that are easy to be overlooked are mentioned in this thesis too, such as the hidden attitude influenced by the cultural factors.After expounding on the theoretical aspect of the schemata in reading comprehension, this thesis lists some useful techniques and methods of building schemata, aiming at initiating more scientific methods that can be practiced in the teaching of reading. Just before the end of this paper, two pilot studies are conducted to testify the validity of schema theory in reading comprehension. Though they cannot be absolute evidence because of many innate limitations, they prove the availability of the schemata to some extent. In the last chapter, the limitation of this thesis is brought forward as well as the directions of future research.