Schema Theory And English Reading Comprehension

The ability to read is acknowledged to be the most stable and durable of the second language modalities. In traditional sense, reading is sometimes viewed as a passive skill. More recently, scholars (Goodman, 1967, and Smith, 1971) developed a psycholinguistic perspective of reading, focusing on its active, cognitive processes. In contemporary approaches to reading, meaning is created through the interaction of reader and text. Readers' expectations are based on readers' prior knowledge. Background knowledge that aids in text comprehension has recently been studied under the rubric of schema theory. Schema theory describes the process by which readers combine their own background knowledge with the information in a text to comprehend that text. This is an important concept in language teaching. It has been used as a theoretical model in several important areas of listening and reading research.This thesis attempts to apply schema theory to the teaching of reading comprehension in middle schools. In the process of reading, Comprehension of a message entails drawing information from both the external graphic message and the internal schemata until the two are reconciled as a single schema or message. It follows that the less familiar readers are with the various schemata of a particular text, the more they will struggle to construct an accurate meaning.Two types of schema most often discussed in reading research are content, schemata and formal schemata. Content schemata are the knowledge relative to the content domain of a text; formal schemata refer to the organization forms and rhetorical structures of different types of texts. Swales (1990: 87) believes that when content and form are familiar, the texts will be relatively accessible.However Carrel (1988:476) concludes her research: when either form or content is unfamiliar, unfamiliar content poses more difficulties for the reader than unfamiliar form.In order to help students learn better,schema must be activated and this activation relates to two basic models of information processing, namely bottom-up processing and top-down processing which are to be discussed. Prereading tasks are often designed to activate or build the students' schemata. The teacher can use the following teaching methods to activate students' existing schemata, which includes brainstorming, class discussions, prequestions, using multimedia, previewing and semantic mapping. As Bransford (1985) points out, schema activation and schema construction are two different problems. While it is possible to activate existing schemata with a given topic, it does not necessarily follow that a reader can use this activated knowledge to develop new knowledge and skills. Therefore, the teacher can adopt the following approaches to build students' new schemata, which includes building what they already know, increasing background information, increasing real-life experiences and vicarious experiences through extensive reading.The main points can be concluded according to the above study: The teacher should have a deep understanding that students' schemata play a very important role in reading comprehension. The teacher can use different methods to activate students' existing schemata or help students build new schemata according to different teaching situations, so that students' reading abilities can be improved.