论文总字数：32247字

摘 要

英语阅读理解被视为初中生有效学习英语的一种方法,同时,这也是他们获取英语国家文化信息的便捷方法。当学生在读一篇文章时,他们自身所具备的背景知识和文章传达的意思之间会产生互动,这种互动是一个动态的过程,这正是图式理论运用的体现。在英语课堂教学中，为了让初中生具备更好的英语阅读能力，教师应当引导他们充分的利用图式理论。为了帮助初中生更有效的提高英语阅读的能力，本论文将对图式理论指导下的教学方法在英语阅读教学中的使用做一个初步的探讨。

关键词：图式理论；初中生；英语阅读理解

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. The Nature of Reading Comprehension 3

3.1 Definition of Reading Comprehension 3

3.2 Three Reading Models 3

3.3 Factors Influence Junior Middle School Students’ English Reading 5

4. Schema Theory 6

4.1 Definition of Schema Theory 6

4.2 Types of Schema Theory 7

5. The Employment of Schema Theory in English Reading Class 7

5.1 Design Activities with Word Association 8

5.2 Design Activities with Prediction and Verification 9

5.3 Design Activities with Direct Practice 9

5. Conclusion 10

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction

“For many junior middle school students, of the four skills in English learning, reading is the most important one.” (Carrell, Devine and Eskey 1987: 98) Reading is a basic approach for students to master linguistic knowledge and skills, which can improve students’ practical competence. Teaching reading in junior middle schools has been the focus in China. Junior middle school students are energetic and active, and they are interested in new knowledge during their studies. Therefore，they are easy to be distracted when they have English reading comprehension classes, because they are too young to keep close concentration on a reading text for a long time. So, in order to enhance the efficiency and quality of English reading classes, teachers should organize some new and interesting activities for their students.

For many junior middle school students, some factors may pose an important effect on their English reading, such as, poor English vocabulary, different learning styles, low level of reading proficiency, weak culture adaptation, immature reading habits and so on. All these factors can make reading comprehension turn to be a difficult part in junior middle school students’ English study. Then, how to effectively guide the reading teaching becomes an important research for many reading specialists, linguists and foreign language teaching professors. Schema theory, originated in the field of psychology has been applied to EFL learning and has a great effect on reading comprehension. According to schema theory, both the reader and the reader’s prior knowledge are important in comprehension. In other words, comprehension involves the coordinated activity of schemata at all levels. Comprehension may fail because readers do not have appropriate schemata, or readers may fail to activate schemata, or applied schemata are different from those intended by the author. Initially, the instruction of English reading in China adopts the traditional method, which is called teacher-centered, grammar and word-based approach. Such model of teaching English reading has many defects: Students can"t understand the text as a whole, they would like to read the passage word by word, pay little attention to the whole structure of the text, let alone the application of the language, and they only pay attention to the study of words and phrases but not to the meaning and function of the text. Through a long time study, junior middle school students’ appreciation ability of English reading is killed by this method. Many teachers from junior middle schools have realized that the conventional English reading teaching method has some deficiencies. Therefore, they try to change it, and want to look for a better way to replace it.

As a result, this thesis is designed for obtaining a better understanding of the schema theory and finding the possibility of using it to improve English reading in junior middle school. Due to the lack of abundant schemata or the low ability to use appropriate schemata, many Chinese EFL students have poor skills of English reading comprehension. However, various teaching methods and classroom activities can be used to help students build or activate schemata. This paper makes an introduction about some methods that are derived from schema theory, which may help to make English reading teaching more effective and interesting.

From the perspective of English reading teaching in junior middle school, this thesis carries out a preliminary discussion from four parts: part one explains the nature of reading comprehension and points out some factors that influence junior middle school students’ English reading. Part two analyzes the positive functions in the application of schema theory to the teaching of English reading. Part three focuses on how to implement reading teaching based on schema theory. And part four makes a conclusion.

2. Literature Review

Being an English major student for four years, on the basis of my study of the theories and methods of teaching reading as well as my own student teaching experience, I come to realize that many factors are involved in the comprehension of English reading texts. One of the factors is individual differences, that is, individuals who read the same English text often end up with different mental representations of the text. According to the study of Aebersold and Field, “Reading researchers have studied differences in the comprehension of texts along two lines. One branch focuses on basic reading and language abilities, for example, vocabulary and grammar, and finds that readers with more skills are better at comprehending texts” (Aebersold and Field 1997: 106). “The second branch addresses differences in specific knowledge brought to the text by readers and has demonstrated that readers with more text-relevant knowledge are better able to comprehend the text”(Anderson 1992: 68). In other words, prior knowledge about the world can affect how a reader reads and remembers the text. Many Chinese EFL students’ poor reading comprehension is frequently caused by lacking prior knowledge. “When people read an English text, the interaction between readers’ background knowledge and the meaning of the text is a dynamic process which is regarded as the use of schema theory.”(Shu Baimei, 2006: 136)

Schema theory was developed by psychologist, Bartlett, who observed people how to repeat a story from memory. He found that most people can repeat the story by making a link with their background knowledge. Schema theory is based on the belief that “every act of comprehension involves one’s knowledge of the world as well”. According to schema theory, it is a reader’s background knowledge and expectation about the world that strongly affect his ability to understand new information. This paper, which is based on my study experience, makes a preliminary discussion of the close relationship between reading comprehension and schema theory. It illustrates the influence of background knowledge on students’ comprehension, and analyzes the ways to make students have the awareness of background knowledge through classroom English reading instruction. The primary purpose of this article is to draw the attention of teachers in China and help them notice the important role that background knowledge plays in reading comprehension. When they pay more attention to the employment of schema theory in their instruction of reading, they might attach the importance to developing students’ prior knowledge before reading. This way will be an effective way to improve English reading comprehension.

3. The Nature of Reading Comprehension

3.1 Definition of Reading Comprehension

Usually, for many people, of the four skills (reading, speaking, writing and listening), reading is a passive skill. During many years’ study, some scholars believe that reading is anything but passive (Goodman 1988: 87). Reading is a process that makes ideas generated by others, which involves complex cognitive processing operation. In addition, reading is a basic way for the transformation of written language, which is a significant bridge between writing and speaking. Scholars developed a psycholinguistic perspective of reading (Goodman 1988: 65), and according to their studies, reading is an active and cognitive process. Some contemporary approaches to reading make people believe that there is a creation from the interaction of reader and text, which is called meaning. In other words, this kind of interaction gives the birth of meaning in texts, which is the key for readers to have a good reading comprehension. Furthermore, what readers should pursue when they read a text is the meaning of the text, and the process of understanding the meaning of a text stands for the nature of reading comprehension.

3.2 Three Reading Models

There are three reading models that have dominated language pedagogy over the last 20 years. Namely, the bottom-up approach, the top-down approach and the interactive processing approach.

3.2.1 The Bottom-up Approach

The process of bottom-up model contains a number of lower levels. According to this model, the first thing comes to a reader’s mind are the words in a reading passage, next, are the sentences. After that, he pays attention to the passage itself. Finally, he moves to the meaning of the passage. This is called the process of understanding. This kind of teaching theory has been employed in many reading books. Many teachers and researchers have pointed out that a reader who wants to succeed, must be able to decompose the text into a series of discrete stages in linear fashion. This theory has acquired support voices from many reading specialists, linguists and foreign language teaching professors．Bottom-up reading method contains such an element, namely advocating the use of graded reading materials. Teaching under the guidance of the bottom-up reading model theory, the most typical focus is intensive reading class. Intensive reading includes a short article to read, followed by some certain activities to improve students reading skills.

3.2.2 The Top-down Approach

The starting point of the top-down models is to make the reader understand the text. Readers use background knowledge to speculate the meaning of the text. Therefore, even if a reader does not know every word, he also can understand the article. The reader’s participation as well as the reader’s prior experience or background knowledge plays a significant role in the process of the top-down model of reading.(Wang Qiang, 2006:184) Under the guidance of the top-down reading teaching theory, teachers should focus on the activities that can help students to understand the meaning of the text rather than the word identification in the text.

3.2.3 The Interactive Processing Approach

The interactive processing approach is developed to make up for the deficiencies of bottom-up and top-down approaches. In this model, interaction is regarded as a constant process between top-down and bottom-up reading skills. Currently, many scholars believe that reading is an interactive, socio-cognitive process, involving a reader, a passage, and a social context. According to the interactive processing approach, in reading, symbols have been created to represent language, with which an individual constructs meaning through a transaction with written text. The transaction involves readers’ acting on or interpreting the text, readers’ past experiences, language background, and cultural framework, as well as readers’ purpose of reading. All these factors can have an effect on the activity of reading comprehension.

3.3 Factors Influence Junior Middle School Students’ English Reading

Students who begin having some readings in second language carry background knowledge are different from that when they started to read in their native language. Most students have known several thousand words before they begin to read in their native language, and they have the ability to handle basic grammar of their language. However, most second language readers don’t possess these superiorities. The learning strategies of a seven-year-old student who begins to study a second language are quite different from those of an 18-year-old student. Their reading levels in native language, word knowledge, reading strategies, and other aspects of the reading process are influenced by the difference. These different factors which related to the age of the learner may influence the performance of language learning. We usually attribute junior middle school students’ reading deficiencies to poor linguistic knowledge such as vocabulary, grammar and so on. So vocabulary and grammar become both the objectives of many language learners and the focuses of some teachers in their classroom. However, we must have such experiences that sometimes we still cannot understand what the writer says even if all the words and grammar in reading are quite familiar or even easy to us. Therefore, our understanding of reading is not merely a process of decoding from the printed words of the text. Instead, “reading involves the reader, the text, and the interaction between reader and text” (Rumelhart 1977: 78). Moreover, reading proficiency, the learning style, culture adaptation, and reading habits among junior middle school students are also influence their English reading study.

Learning style, also called cognitive style orientation, researchers, scholars and teachers pay more attention on it. We need to admit that each person brings a preferred style, whether he is conscious or unconscious to the learning process. When read a new text, the student who has reflections on the text, tends to focus on new information and processes it carefully. In contrast, a risk taker might make a guess and plunge into a new task without much reflection. English reading teachers should have their responsibilities to recognize various cognitive style differences, remind when students are using unfit strategies, and help students adjust.

The level of reading proficiency that a reader has in the native language also appears to be a factor that influences the development of second language reading skills. A skillful native language reader has the potential competence of using native language skills to enhance his second language reading. Teaching students reading skills with the help of their native language can facilitate the transfer of reading skills from the native language to a second language.

The ability of culture adaptation leads to a wide variety of reading behaviors and performance. Cultural differences make up the largest category of factors that have effects on second language reading. Generally speaking, second language reading is most influenced by the ability of culture adaptation, which has been performed in these areas: the reader’s attitudes and purpose for the reading text; the reader’s reading skills and strategies; the reader’s beliefs about the reading process; the reader’s knowledge of text types in the native language（formal schemata）; and the read’s background knowledge（content schemata）.

Reading habits play a vital role in English reading comprehension. Many second language readers are used to decoding the words and keeping them in their working memories when the next word is being processed. As a junior middle school student who reads more, he can read the words and know the meanings of the words easily. However, it is difficult for him to understand the meaning of the whole text if he only moves his eyes form one word to the other. It is obviously that the reader should remember ideas of the text much better than actual words. English reading teachers need to help students establish good English reading habits, and try to use new good English reading habits to replace the bad habits of English reading.

4. Schema Theory

4.1 Definition of Schema Theory

Schema theory was developed by R．C．Anderson, an educational psychologist. From his study, organized knowledge is viewed as a complicated network of abstract mental structures, which represent one’s understanding of the world．Schema theory deals with a reader’s reading process, namely, when a reader is reading a text, he combines his previous experiences or background knowledge with the text that he is reading. It is culture specific that each reader has different background knowledge. Schema theory was developed by psychologist Bartlett who observed people how to repeat a story from memory. He found that most people can repeat the story by making a link with their background knowledge. Schema theory is based on the belief that “every act of comprehension involves one’s knowledge of the world as well”.

According to schema theory, it is a reader’s background knowledge and expectation about the world that strongly affect his ability to understand new information. Behind schema theory are texts themselves, which are the basic principle, a reader’s spoken or written, does not possess meaning. Reading is an interactive process between a reader and the text. Therefore, the reader needs to link the clues which are provided in the text with his own background knowledge. Comprehending words, sentence, and the whole texts not just depend on one’s linguistic knowledge, in contrast, every act of comprehension involves one’s knowledge of the word.

4.2 Types of Schema Theory

Linguistic schema, formal schema and content schema are three important branches of schema theory. Making a distinction among the three is helpful to understand the role of background knowledge in reading comprehension.

4.2.1 Linguistic Schema in English Reading

Linguistic schema is used to represent a reader’s prior linguistic knowledge. It is linguistic schema that contains language information which is in the reading materials. In another word, it is the knowledge of language such as: phonetics, grammar, vocabulary as well as the cohesive devices of the language such as substitution, conjunction, ellipsis, lexical cohesion and inter-sentential linkage and their functions across sentences and paragraphs and so on. Using linguistic schema is the basic way for students to understand a reading text.

4.2.2 Formal Schema in English Reading

The background knowledge of the formal and rhetorical organizational structures of different types of texts can give the definition of formal schema. It is the knowledge of rhetoric patterns in which information is represented. Formal schema is of great help for students to form right English discourse and stylistic schema, thus improving their reading ability as well as arousing their interests in English reading and activating their English thought pattern.

4.2.3 Content Schema in English Reading

Content schema is viewed as the background knowledge of a text. Namely, it is the knowledge about the topic that a reader is reading or discussing. In a language reading class, Content schema has three processes: Pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. Among the three, post-reading is the most important part in English reading. After students reading the text, if they establish a link between their background knowledge and the text, they will get a good understand of the meaning of the text. In this process, content schema is created by students themselves, which can improve their reading skills.

5. The Employment of Schema Theory in English Reading Class

Although this paper has discussed above that different readers possess different schema information in their brains, however, just have those here, English reading is unable to complete. Because of the combination of two interactive models----top-down model and bottom-up model in the process of reading comprehension, namely, it is an interaction process of reading materials and a reader’s original background knowledge. In the process, when a reader’s experience and background knowledge are successfully activated, which is good for him to analyze and understand new information and complete the whole process of reading a passage. In traditional English reading classes, the knowledge is accepted by most students passively, while the teacher plays a key role in the whole class, which means from the perspective of words to understand the article. In the process of English reading, the students have little chance to play initiative role. They understand the article only in words but cannot relate new information to their original knowledge, which is hard to really understand the article.

In order to be better readers, junior middle school students should have the chance to learn how they are reading and what they can do to improve their English reading comprehension. They need to develop the level of their schema awareness. In English reading classes, therefore, one of the important tasks for teachers is to activate students’ content representation in the brain, namely the students’ original background knowledge. Three aspects will be discussed in this thesis, which are important ways to implement reading teaching based on schema theory in junior middle school English reading classes.

5.1 Design Activities with Word Association

In word association activities, firstly, a reading teacher should make sure that what original background knowledge need to taking into a new reading materials by students. Teachers can make teaching plans according to students’ background knowledge. For example, before teachers are going to teach the article about Halloween, so as to have a rough knowledge about students" familiarity with Halloween, teachers can give the keyword “Halloween” first, then give students 3 minutes to search for words and phrases about "What do we need in a Halloween party?" and tell them they should give relative word to the topic as much as they can. In this case, students will make use of their own original background knowledge, and then teachers need to write down the words and phrases on the blackboard, classify them together with students. In addition, teachers can ask students to make a free writing before they read the passage. Students can write down anything within the theme scope in 5 minutes, needn’t consider the grammar, spelling, etc., choosing some of them to share the content with the whole class. By organizing these activities, teachers can know clearly about the degree of students’ knowledge of Halloween. Thus teachers can judge which student’s background knowledge needs to be activated as well as how to establish a connection between the background knowledge and the new knowledge from the text, and what knowledge that needs to be added, then make the arrangement of the next teaching steps according to the actual situation of the students. At the same time, through sharing the knowledge, the original background knowledge of the students can have complement and activation for their schema content.

5.2 Design Activities with Prediction and Verification

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