The Schema Theory And Its Application In The Teaching Of Reading In Senior English Teaching

Since l960s,with the development of cognitive psychology, scholars and educationists in the West have studied and founded a lot of reading theories from the perspective of psychology and cognitive psychology,among which the schema theory,has been widely accepted as playing a key role in reading comprehension.According to the theory,reading comprehension is a complex interactive process between the reader's background knowledge / prior knowledge and the reading material.Readers,when reading,will actively utilize their previously acquired background knowledge to decode and assimilate new information.Rumelhart once stated that the reader's right interpretation of a text is based on the following two conditions:firstly, the reader has appropriate schemata related to the text;secondly,the related schemata are successfully activated in reading.Pedagogical researchers have gradually realized that the reader must be equipped with relevant background knowledge and applies it to the reading process in order to improve the reading quality.Under the guidance of this perspective,in the 1960's Ausubel first raised the concept of Advance Organizer.The reader can be provided with the needed background knowledge contained in some introductory information of materials prior to reading . Ausubel demonstrated that organizers facilitate understanding of materials.Since l980s,Chinese linguists have done researches into the effects of schema theory on English reading comprehension.The present paper demonstrates the relations between reading comprehension and mental schemata from different perspectives.It reports an empirical study of the effects of advance organizer on the reading comprehension of Chinese EFL students on the basis of research into schematic knowledge and reading theories.A quantitative investigation is carried out to examine the performance of the subjects in with-organizer and without-organizer groups in the process of reading.Research results indicate that advance organizer produces a facilitative effect on the subjects'performance in reading comprehension and organizer tends to produce greater effects on the performance of low-ability subjects.Background knowledge elicited by advance organizers and linguistic ability of the reader produce an interactive effect on reading comprehension.The background knowledge and the knowledge of the language are combined together to interpret the text wholly and accurately.Finally, it discusses the pedagogical implications derived from reseach findings and makes some suggestions related to reading teaching and learning.