A Study On The Application Of Cultural Background Knowledge In English Reading Teaching In Junior High School Based On Schema Theory

According to the setting of Junior High School Curriculum Standards,reading teaching occupies nearly half of the English curriculum.However,for a long time,teachers have focused on the “bottom-up” model-literal teaching.How to improve performance in the reading comprehension teaching has always been a difficult problem for English teachers.Under the current unsatisfied situation,taking two classes of grade eight in Yingkou experimental school as the research subject,this paper attempts to study the application of cultural background knowledge in English Reading Teaching in junior high school based on schema theory.Schema theory holds that the acquisition of any new knowledge depends on the learners to find the connection between the new knowledge and the existing knowledge.The reason why students are difficult to understand the text is the lack of relevant schemata.By researching and practicing cultural background knowledge as a content schema,readers are able to predict the content of the text,understand the main content of the text and improve their cultural character（one of the core qualities of Key Competence）.This study conducted questionnaire to investigate students’ awareness and confusion of cultural background knowledge.Through the tests,this study testified the improvement of reading comprehension level through teaching cultural background knowledge.By adopting classroom observation,this study compared the teaching effects of two classes after implementing different teaching methods.Therefore this study investigates the effective ways of teaching cultural background knowledge to improve English reading ability and the effects of teaching cultural background knowledge on junior high school English reading teaching.This research shows that in the pre-reading stage,teachers should help students establish cultural awareness and activate schemata in students’ brain.In the while-reading stage,schema is understood by comparing,describing and supplementing relevant cultural materials.In the after-reading stage,schema is consolidated through different types of after-school tasks.Through the research and application of the cultural background knowledge of schema theory in junior high school English reading teaching,this paper provides insights for junior high school English reading teaching and the improvement of students’ cross-cultural communication ability.