The Application Of Schema Theory To EFL Writing In High School

Schema was put forward by German philosopher Immannel Kant in 1781 as a philosophy conception. With some other psychologists'study, schema theory was developed and has taken on new significance. Continual studies about schema theory show the importance of background knowledge or prior knowledge in understanding and remembering new information. As a result, based on the on the interrelationship between schema theory and learning as well as the investigation of applying schema theory to language reading and listening, this present experiment will further research on the application of schema theory to EFL writing and it is intended to be of a little bit pedagogical significance for effective writing instructions for the senior middle school students and teachers. This study covers the period of a semester which lasted five months. The subjects of the experiment are 110 senior two students from two classes in An Qiu Experimental Middle School.The thesis is made up of altogether seven parts, including five chapters.This thesis begins with introduction. In this part, the problems existing in the weak productive skills, especially in the middle school students'EFL writing are put forward. After that, the purpose and the significance of the study are also expressed in this part.After Introduction is Chapter One Literature Review. This chapter reviews the previous major researches on EFL writing both abroad and at home. From the earlier researches, great progress made by the previous researchers in writing teaching can be seen. They offered evidence that proper pedagogical theory direction worked in improving the students'writing proficiency.Chapter Two introduces the Schema Theory and gives a rough sketch of the schema theory development. In fact, schema (schemata ) is the means by which knowledge is represented and stored in human brain. The schema guides us in"interrogating"and making sense of information. From the studies of a list of great language volunteers, schema theory proves a valid explanation for how learners process and interpret information, for which schema theory has been used as a guide for language teaching and learning. And this chapter also states the types of schema: linguistic schema, including knowledge of vocabulary, grammar and cohesion; content schema, referring to the background knowledge of the content area of a text; formal schema, on the levels of the rhetorical and genre knowledge of the types of texts.Chapter Three is Experimental Study. This is the key part of the thesis. It is the report of the study including the methodology and the whole experiment process in details. And two hypothesis are proposed in this part. How all the data is collected and analyzed is also described in this chapter. The author in the procedure of this chapter shows how the schema theory has been used in guiding the EFL writing of the middle school students. By activating the existed schema and building up new schema, the students have achieved significant success in linguistic transfer, cultural transfer, writing structure transfer and audience awareness transfer. From this chapter, the author also shows how the students have improved their writing production in the process of schema-based writing training.Chapter Four is the Results and Discussions. After collecting all the data in the experiment, and careful data analysis, the thesis comes to the results and meets the answers to the problems put forward in the first Introduction part. This chapter proves with data that the EFL writing proficiency of the middle school students can be improved under the direction of certain proper pedagogical theory. It is just because of the lack of students'content or formal schema and the failure of activating of the existed schema in their minds that influenced their writing skill. And also, the interference of L1 use in the writing process and the lack of reader's awareness are another factors to affect their writing. All in all, schema theory proves an efficient entrance to improving the EFL writing proficiency.Following Chapter Four is the fifth chapter which stresses the applications and implications. Namely, it is about how to realize the function of schema-based writing in practice including both teaching and learning. The author explored the function of schema theory from the following three aspects: the application of schema theory to the writing assignment, the application of schema theory to responding to the Ss' writing, and the application of schema theory to guiding the feedback. It has not only given suggestions on how to guide writing but meanwhile has raised a few strategies to guide the teachers in teaching. Besides, the limitations of the study and some new further researches for this study are also raised in this part.With Conclusion as the last part of the thesis, the author makes a general summary of the study as well as the results, analysis, findings and implications. This part concludes with the guiding function of schema-based writing training in improving the middle school students'writing skill with concrete data. The pedagogical use of schema-based writing study is deeply proved by this experiment.