The Application Of Schema Theory To English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

Reading is an important skill for students of English as a second/foreign language, and for many, reading is the most essential skill to master. The teaching of reading is supposed to be one of the most important tasks in senior high school English teaching, but the reading ability of many students is not satisfactory. The Grammar-Translation teaching model adopted in many schools possesses certain demerits that prevent the improvement of students’reading comprehension ability and reading skills instead of promoting them.At present, one of the dominant viewpoints about the analysis of reading process is schema theory. Schema theory holds the view that any language material oral or literary, possesses no meaning itself. Instead, it only instructs the readers and the listeners to form meaning in accordance with their prior knowledge. Therefore, it is important to activate the relevant schemata in the reader’s mind when doing and teaching reading comprehension.In order to find out whether English reading teaching based on schema theory can improve students’reading competence and stimulate their interest in reading, the author carried out an experiment in Tianjin Nancang Middle School from March,2010to January,2011. Two classes of Senior Grade One in Tianjin Nancang Middle School were chosen as the Experiment Class and the Control Class respectively. The schema-oriented instruction model was used in the experiment class, and one semester later, in order to make the experiment result more objective and reliable, both the Experiment Class and the Control Class were trained under the same model. In the study, data were collected through a pre-test, post-test1, post-test2, a questionnaire survey and an interview.The statistical results of the experiment indicate that students in EC have outperformed students in CC in reading after a whole year’s training. And students in CC have also made progress after one semester’s training. The results of the questionnaire survey which was conducted both before and after the experiment and the interview demonstrate that students have become more interested in English reading than before. They have learned to set up reading goals and make reading plans. Many students choose to voluntarily read English books or practice reading comprehension after class, which they seldom do before the experiment. Therefore, we come to the conclusion that the application of schema theory in reading teaching is effective in helping develop both students’reading interest and their English reading competence.