Research For Schema Theory In English Reading Teaching Of Senior High School

English goes more and more important with the globalization. As a language, English reading organically integrates the basic skills such as reading, speaking, listening and writing together. A good reading skill not only lowers the difficulty in English but also generates a self-achievement in the students, which produces the persistence and vitality of studying for the students.However, some problems and misunderstanding exist in the traditional reading. In the reading class, readers have accustomed to reading like this: reviewing the words, piecing the passage for the information of grammar and reciting the grammar and sentences. Mechanical reading and the repeated ‘spoon-feeding' fall the students down to the status of being passive, inactive and being numb and they always wait for the teachers to translate and explain it words by words and sentences by sentences, which causes readers to have a poor reading. And they have no idea about the views, the attitudes of the writers and the idea of humanism that are forged in the discourse. They do as the teachers tell them to, and in the class they think little and study the reading for the reason that ‘it is important 'and ‘it is needed by the social calls'.Modern Schema Theory assumes that language itself is meaningless. It is only an tool of guiding. During reading, readers borrow his previous knowledge to extract meaning and reconstruct conception. This previous knowledge is ‘schema'. Once a schema is activated, readers then compare the difference between new and old knowledge. From this, readers construct the concept and finish reading.To improve reading skill, it is a necessity for readers to use scientific reading theory-Schema Theory to direct this activity. This paper is going to study Schema Theory and hopes to find a better way to activate schema of readers. And the research hopes to apply Schema Theory to English reading practice.The research takes students of Huixian Senior High School as study subject. Questionnaire, interview and tests are employed in this research. According to the exploration and analysis, the activation of schema in reading can promote the interest and the reading skills of the students. Among these schemas that are activated, cultural background knowledge makes reading smooth and this kind of activation is also more common. At the same time, it testifies the theoretical direction of Schema Theory in reading.There are two questions to be solved.1. What is the function of the application of Schema Theory in reading?2. What ways can be used to activate the students' existing schemata to promote reading ?The thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter is the introduction of the background of the thesis, the research questions, the research methods and the description about the layout of the thesis. The second chapter is about the literature review and the studies of constructivism model home and abroad. The third chapter is the theoretical framework. It is made of two parts. The first part includes the definition of schema, the development of schema and the three major forms which are language schema, content schema and formal schema. The second part is the function of Schema Theory that can predict, complement and speculate in reading process. This stresses that it is important to activate background knowledge. Chapter four is the research design. In the research, the thesis contains the hypothesis of the research, the analysis and introduction of subjects of the study and the research procedures. In chapter four, the author researches the new and traditional reading teaching method and describes the application of Schema Theory. Chapter five is the analysis on the data including the result of the pre-test and post-test analysis, the investigation after the experiment and the discussion about the result of the experiment. The last chapter is the conclusion. For this part, the author presents the main findings from the experiment, limitation of the study and the author expresses the suggestions for the study in the future.