【正文】 畢業(yè)論文The Application of Schema Theory to English Reading Teaching in Senior High SchoolIntroduction 11. Theories about English Reading 3 The understanding of reading process 3 Schemata and the reading process 42. A theoretical frameworkschema and schema theory 4 The definition of schema 5 Types of schemata 6 Language schemata 6 Formal schemata 7 Content schemata 8 functions of schema 9 Helping readers predict the content of texts 9 Helping readers select the information 103. The present state of reading teaching in Senior High School 114. Factors affecting Senior High School students’ reading prehension 125. The application of schema theory 14 To enrich students’ schemata 15 To activate students’ schemata 16 To build up students’ schemata 18 An example of applying schema theory in the course of reading teaching 19Conclusion 22References 23Introduction Reading plays an important role in foreign language teaching and learning, for it is one of the most essential ways to acquire foreign language knowledge and skills. For most students, especially for Senior High School students, reading is by far the most important one of the four skills in English language learning. In every year’s College Entrance Examination, reading prehension covers a large proportion of the test paper, the requirement for reading ability increase and the position of reading prehension is more outstanding. Therefore, how to improve students’ reading prehension ability effectively bees the focus in English reading teaching in High School. However, a great deal has been done in this aspect, yet we are aware that many students, after learning English for years, often end in failure about their prehension when asked to read a passage(Tang Ailian, 2001: 4). Because the traditional reading teaching stressed students’ linguistic knowledge excessively, neglecting background knowledge and the structure of the text. Traditional view of English reading teaching regards reading prehension as a Bottomup process. English teaching focus on interpreting words, sentences and grammar. Thus, the text is divided into parts to read rather than to read as a whole, which has little effect on improving readers’ reading ability. Between our students’ actual reading ability and the requirement of the High School English Syllabus, there is a wide gap. Therefore, it is high time that we reevaluated our reading teaching. The author applies the schema theory to guide English reading teaching. Since this theory holds that the reading process is not only a process of polishing language and concepts, but also making use of the original background knowledge. Thus, in reading classes teachers should help students activate the schemata stored in their minds to improve students’ reading ability.1. Theories about English Reading The understanding of reading process In a long period, many researches have been carried on the nature of reading process. Until now, it is not easy to define the nature of reading. Reading has different meanings. It is traditionally believed that reading prehension is a bottomup process in which the readers decode printed pages from letters, words, and semantic graphic units. It has shortings which overemphasizes the meaning in the reading process, neglecting the background knowledge of the text. Later, with the development of psychological linguistics, applied linguistics, and discourse theory, more and more theories about reading prehension were put forward by some foreign linguists. The most important one is Goodman’s (1967: 170) Investigations of first language prehension, which characterized reading as a “psychological guessing game,” emphasizing the importance of topdown processing. However, the past decade have seen a very considerable growth of interest in reading prehension and schema theory. Coady(1979: 59) thought that reading is an interactive plex of abilities or skills and knowledge. That is, reading is also regarded as a plicated process in which readers work out the meaning of the written text with the process of interaction between understanding linguistic features of text and prior background knowledge of readers. The interactive processing also call Schema Theory Model. Schemata and the reading process No matter the reading process is “Bottomup,” “TopDown” or “Interactive” process, readers can’t arrive at prehension without their schematic knowledge. In the process of reading, “prehension of a message entails drawing information from both the message and the internal schemata unit sets are reconciled as a single schema or message” (Anderson, 1982: 53). Reading prehension is a plex process, which also has been described as a constructive process (Bartlett 1932, Spiro 1980). In order to understand the text, the reader must use information, which is explicit and implicit to form a schema. Readers interpret a text according to their schemata. Schema theory believes that knowledge is systematically organized (Rumelhart, 1980). A schema can be defined as having elements or ponents which can be delineated and which are ordered in specific ways. Readers use schemata to anticipate text content and structures. The way we interpret depend on the schemata activated by the text。 and whether we interpret successfully depends on whether our schemata are sufficiently similar to the writer’s schemata.2. A theoretical frameworkschema and schema theory The importance of schematic knowledge is now widely acknowledged in language teaching theory and many researches in the schemaoriented realm of EFL reading have been done. The results of these researches have shown that reading prehension can be significantly facilitated by utilizing schema theory in reading process. Therefore, in the following parts, some theoretical frameworks are discussed. The definition of schema The term “schema” was first evolved out of the Gestalt psychology and Bartlett’s the