An Application Of Schema Theory In The Improvement Of Junior School Students’ Abilities In English Writing

The study attempts to find a new efficient way for the English writing teaching toimprove the junior middle school students’ English writing, and to activate students’ interestsin the English writing at the same time. The author has carried out an empirical study byapplying the schema theory into the junior middle school students’ English writing teaching.The study mainly deals with the following two research questions:1. Can the application ofschema theory on English writing teaching improve junior middle school students’ writingcompetence?2. After the schematic writing training, what kinds of schemata can have a moresignificant development?The author has adopted both of the qualitative and quantitative research methods in thisstudy. Before the experiment, the author has conducted a questionnaire investigation amongthe80students of the two classes. The purpose of the investigation is to know the situationand the problems of the students’ English writing learning, so that the author can arrangeproper teaching methods in the experiment, and help students achieve more significantimprovement. Then, the author has conducted a pre-test and a pro-test for both of the classes.And finally, all the data is collected and analyzed with the SPSS software. The analyticmethods include Independent Sample T-test and Paired Sample T-test. After the experiment,the author also conducted an individual interview with10students from the experimentalgroup.From the analyses of the data collected and the summary of the interview, the authorobtains some significant findings:(1) It shows the schema theory does have a positive and significant effect on improvingstudents’ English writing.(2) It is much easier to improve students’ formal schema through the schematicteaching approach. But it is relatively less significant on the development of content.