On The Applications Of Cultural Schemata To The Interpretations Of English Literary Texts In Senior High Schools

Senior high school students’ reading comprehension ability has been widely valued,and it is one of the important manifestations of the core competences of English subject.Recently,New Curriculum Standards(2017 ed.)has put forward higher requirements for the students,that is,they should learn to interpret the texts so as to develop the ability to accomplish continuation writing tasks more effectively.Text interpretation is not only an important prerequisite for teachers to carry out reading teaching,but also an important way for students to obtain text information.However,in reality,there is a phenomenon about insufficient attention paid by the teachers to literary texts and deficient cultural background knowledge owned by the students about English-speaking countries,which leads to the relatively unsatisfactory interpretation results about English literary texts for the students.The activation or construction of cultural schemata in schema theory is helpful in the solving of the problem,but there are few related studies.Therefore,the present study attempts to explore the applications of cultural schemata to the interpretations of English literary texts in senior high schools.Based on relevant theories of cultural schemata and interpretations of English literary texts,the author has conducted the three-month empirical research from March,2018 to June,2018 in the Middle School Attached to Sichuan Normal University.It is also a case study,whose research subjects mainly include the eight English teachers in Senior Two of the school,and all the 537 students in this grade are participants of the survey.Through the research instruments of questionnaires,classroom observations and interviews,the author has conducted a survey to explore the three research questions concerning the applications of cultural schemata in the interpretations of senior high English literary texts: 1)What is the general situation about teachers’ understanding and applications of cultural schemata in the interpretations of senior high English literary texts? 2)How are cultural schemata applied to the interpretations of English literary texts? 3)What are the changes in terms of the students’ ability about interpretations of English literary texts after the applications of cultural schemata?The results of the research show that all of the teachers acknowledge the theoretical value of the study and have tried to apply it in practical teaching,but there is still a gap between theory and practice due to the insignificant effect of the application in the short term,the lack of specific operational guidance and assistance as well as some requirements for both teachers’ and students’ language proficiency;after teachers’ using of various ways to guide students to activate or construct cultural schemata according to specific conditions,the senior high school students can interpret English literary texts from the aspect of cultural content more accurately,thus improving the ability for the interpretations of the literary texts.In addition,the author has summarized some implications on how teachers teach and how students learn in the aspects of the activation or construction of cultural schemata and the interpretations of English literary texts.According to the limitations of this study like the research subjects and research instruments,the author will try to solve them in future research,and some suggestions and references have been put forward for further studies made by others.