Students’ Perceptions And Expectations On Application Of Schema Theory In College English Reading Teaching

Grounded in Rumelhart et al.’s Schema Theory framework, this study is conducted to examine students’perceptions and expectations on application of Schema Theory in college English teaching through a sample survey. One questionnaire was designed based on three main dimensions—pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading activities in terms of linguistic schema, content schema and formal schema. Non-English major freshmen from Zhejiang Gongshang University were selected (n=150).The significance of the study:1) it enriches the study of Schema Theory in English reading teaching;2) it helps teachers to know more about their own English reading teaching and work together with students on determining how best to learn. The major findings include:1) about the three reading phases:in students’ perceptions, teachers in the university pay more attention to the pre-reading phase; in students’ expectations, they want teachers to do well in pre-reading phase just as what their teachers have done. However, they also strongly expect activities in post-reading phase to consolidate what they have obtained from the text.2) About three kinds of schema:in the whole reading process, teachers emphasize activities related to linguistic schema. In both pre-reading and post-reading phases, teachers take more activities about linguistic schema, while in while-reading phase, teachers take relatively more activities about content schema; nonetheless, the strongest expectations of students in the whole reading process and all three phases are activities related to linguistic schema, while their expectations of activities related to content and formal schema in each phase are not low.Based on the results, pedagogical suggestions are put forward:1) based on the emphasis on the pre-reading activities, college English teachers need to pay more attention to post-reading activities.2) Linguistic schema should always be valued in reading, while content schema and formal schema should also cause teachers’attention in reading.