Implications Of Schema Theory For College English Reading Teaching

College English teaching reform has been one of the hottest issues in China in recent years. The new College English Curriculum Requirements for Trial Implementation . issued at the beginning of 2004 by the National Ministry of Education prescribes that college English should develop students' ability to use English in an all-round way, especially in listening and speaking. However, to place listening and speaking at an important position does not mean to weaken the role of reading. Reading is a basis for students to grasp linguistic knowledge, obtain information and improve communicative competence, which should remain at the first and foremost place in college English curriculum.Most college students find it difficult to develop reading ability, turning out with various difficulties in comprehending English texts. The backward traditional teaching mode of college English in China has inhibited the development of students' reading proficiency. It is necessary for teachers to get thorough understanding of the nature of reading process, learn some reading theories so as to explore effective teaching modes to improve teaching quality.Schema theory provides a new perspective to interpret the reading process, which has absorbed the essence from interactive models and emphasizes the role of background knowledge in comprehension. Based on schema theory, this thesis makes an attempt to elaborate on the implications of schema theory for the teaching of college English reading by conducting an empirical study to verify the effects of formal schemata on college students' English reading, which specifically consists of the following six chapters:Chapter One makes an introduction to the whole thesis with the focus on how the present topic is chosen. It rethinks about the ongoing college English teaching reform, investigates the current situation of college English reading, which reveals students' poor performance and teachers' deficient instruction, and thus sets forth the significance of the thesis. The outline of the whole thesis is also displayed.Chapter Two is dedicated to analyzing the nature of reading process. From the perspective of reading models, the three well-known general models-bottom-up, top-down and interactive models are examined. Besides, some specific models that belong to these three general models are also referred to. With a special reference to schema theory, the schema-theoretic view of reading is elaborated on. Then in the literature review of recent reading researches in the Western countries and also in China, the schema-theory-related ones are focused on by intention.Chapter Three is concerned with schema and schema theory. It traces the origin and historical development, addresses the definitions, and generalizes the characteristics as well as the functions of schemata in reading comprehension.Chapter Four presents three different types of schemata, which are linguistic schemata, content schemata and formal schemata. Their different roles in reading comprehension and respective relevant researches are succinctly dealt with. Formal schemata are further expounded and argued to bear useful pedagogical implications for college English teaching.Chapter Five describes the current experiment in detail, including its purpose, research questions, method and materials. The collected data is statistically analyzed by the SPSS software and then the analytical results are discussed to figure out the answers to the research questions.Chapter Six, the last chapter, brings this thesis to a conclusion. The major findings of the study are summarized, the implications for teaching are indicated and limitations are pointed out. Also included are some suggestions for future research.