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

Reading ability as one of the basic skills of language plays an important role inlanguage learning. For the purpose of improving senior high school students’ Englishreading ability, a new teaching method directed by schema theory has been putforward by linguistic educationist. Though the application of schema theory to seniorhigh school English reading teaching has been extremely universal in many developedarea of China, teaching method guided by schema theory were not accept by allteachers yet, especially in some undeveloped area of China such as Dafang Guizhou.This thesis aims at proving that the English reading teaching method guided byschema theory can improve senior high school students’ reading ability, especially thestudents in the undeveloped area of China. Two research questions will be solved atthe end of this thesis.(1)Can the English reading teaching method directed by schematheory improve students’ reading ability?(2)Can the students have a better habittowards reading and acquire necessary reading skills under the influence of theteaching method guided by schema theory?Both of two experimental parts were carried out in Guizhou Dafang No,3Middle school. In this thesis, an experiment and four questionnaire surveys werecarried out by the author. Four questionnaires are one for teachers and threequestionnaires for students including before the experiment and after the experiment.As for the part of experiment, which lasts18weeks, was carried out in twoexperimental classes including60subjects. Comparing their own scores whichcollected from their texts is the way to verify the efficient of the experiment. Thenanalyzing and discussing the result to figure out if the teaching method guided byschema theory can improve senior high school students’ reading ability.At the end of the experiment, the author found out that students’ reading abilitieshave not been improved obviously, but their cultural awareness have been improveda lot and their reading habits is much better than before. Because the experiment timeand the author’ knowledge are limited, the result was not satisfying. But the authorbelieves that as time goes by, the students’ reading ability would be improved afterenough training.This thesis consists of five parts. The first part is an introduction which elaboratesthe background and significance of this thesis. The second part is a literature review.In this part, the author elaborated schema theory in details including the origin ofschema theory, the three types of schema and the current research in schema theoryboth in China and abroad. In the third part, experimental procedure was expounded toreaders. In the fourth chapter, the author analyzed and discussed the data collected inthe experiment. The conclusion of this thesis was described in last chapter, whichincluding findings, limitations as well as suggestions for the further study.