Application Of Schema Theory In College English Reading Teaching

Reading, a basic skill for students to acquire knowledge, obtain information and improve communicative competence, counts heavily in a variety of reading examinations, such as CET-4, CET-6, TEM-4 and TEM-8.Under the traditional teaching mode, most students find it difficult to develop reading ability; hence they meet various barriers to texts comprehension. Then it's necessary for teachers to learn the cognitive process of reading thoroughly and explore the effective teaching modes to improve teaching quality based on some reading theories.Schema theory, which originated from cognitive psychology and strengthens the great importance of background knowledge in reading process, has become the focus for many researchers to teaching studies. This thesis makes an attempt to verify the effects of applying schema theory in the teaching of college English reading by conducting an empirical study, and explores the teaching methods which can improve students'reading proficiency based on schemata. Questionnaire and tests are adopted to test the effect of the study.The result of the study proves that these schemata-oriented teaching activities are applicable to stimulating students'potential schemata which lead to better understanding. And this conclusion is further proved by the analysis of their scores in the tests and questionnaire. Furthermore, based on the results of the experiment and students' performance in class, the author puts forward some suggestions on the teaching mode.