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Schema Theory and Teaching English Reading

毕业论文

Schema Theory and Teaching English Reading 图式理论与英语阅读教学

Abstract:The ability to read is acknowledged to be the most stable and durable often second language modalities. As we all know, reading is very important for almost all the people, especially for the students. However, we have found that although a great deal has been done in this aspect indeed, after learning English for years, often end in failure about their comprehension when asked to read a passage. As teachers, they should constantly study more theories about teaching and put then into practices for our references.

Schema theory describes the process by which readers combine their own background knowledge with the information in a text to comprehend that text. This is an important concept in language teaching. It has been used as a theoretical model in several important areas of listening and reading research. Schemata facilitate reading comprehension, and poor comprehension is due to lack of schematic knowledge. According to schema theory, comprehending a text is an interactive process between the reader with his background knowledge and the writer with his thoughts in the text. The teacher should guide students to apply different types of schemata to know the meaning of a passage.

The aim of the study is to explore how to effectively teach English reading more effectively in middle schools.Based on the theory of schema theory, this paper explores the nature of the reading teaching process.First of all, this paper gives a general introduction of schema theory. Next, analyzes reading comprehension and the importance of the reading comprehension. Last, this paper proposes some teaching approaches about how the students are trained in English reading under the guidance of schema theory by the teacher.

Key words: schema theory, English reading teaching, application.

【摘要】阅读能力在外语能力中被认为是最稳定和最持久的。对于阅读的重要性人们早已达成了共识,尤其对学生来说。然而我们发现尽管选取不用类型的材料对学生进行各种强化训练,但效果并不佳。作为教师,要提高学生的阅读理解能力,不仅要不断的学习指导阅读的理论知识和学习策略,更要积极地将其运用于实践以指导教学。

图式理论作为一种理论模式,它己用于听力和阅读的重要研究领域。图式有助于阅读理解,阅读理解不好是因为缺少图式知识。依据图式理论,理解文章的过程实质就是读者的背景知识和文字的互相交融。在阅读教学中,教师要让学生学会充分运用各种图式来实现真正的理解文章的意义。

本次研究的目的在于探索如何更有效地教中学生英语阅读课。本论文以图式理论为理论基础,对阅读教学过程的本质深入探索。首先,本论文整体介绍图式理论;其次,分析了阅读理解和阅读理解的重要性;最后,提出了一些关于教师如何正确地运用图式理论来引导学生有效地提高英语阅读水平的建议。

【关键词】:图式理论;英语阅读教学;应用

Contents

Introduction引言 (1)

Chapter One Schema Theory (1)

1.1 The Definition of Schema (1)

1.2 The Features of Schema (2)

1.3 The types of Schema (3)

1.3.1 Linguistic Schema (3)

1.3.2 Formal Schema (3)

1.3.3 Content Schema (3)

1.4 The Functions of Schema (4)

Chapter Two Teaching Reading in Middle School (4)

2.1 Reading Comprehension (4)

2.2 The Types of Reading Proces s (4)

2.3 Reading Comprehension and the Importance of the Reading Reaching (6)

2.4 The Students Should Master the Reading Strategies (7)

Chapter Three Application of Schema Theory in Teaching Reading (7)

3.1 Main Problems in English Reading (8)

3.2 The Strategies of Constructing Schema (8)

3.2.1 Pre-reading Stage错误!未定义书签。

3.2.2 While-read Stage……………………………………………………..….…错误!未定义书签。

3.2.3 Post-read Stage.......................................................................错误!未定义书签。Conclusion. (10)

Bibliography (11)

Acknowledgement (12)

Introduction引言

With the development of the reform of English teaching and learning, the research on the English teaching and learning has won great achievements. Reading is an extremely useful skill and plays an extraordinarily important role in Senior High School. The New English Curriculum Standards (2003) emphasizes strongly developing students?reading abilities, techniques and strategies. Therefore, the teaching of reading in the EFL class is supposed to be one of the most important tasks in Senior High School. It is very necessary to reform our teaching in English reading under the new curriculum, so as to help students improve their learning enthusiasm.

As a result, many theories on reading comprehension have been brought about, and schema theory is one of them. Schema theory describes the process by which readers combine their own background knowledge with the information in a text to comprehend that text. This is an important concept in language teaching. It has been used as a theoretical model in several important areas of listening and reading research. Schemata facilitate reading comprehension, and poor comprehension is due to lack of schematic knowledge. According to schema theory, comprehending a text is an interactive process between the reader with his background knowledge and the writer with his thoughts in the text. The teacher should guide students to apply different types of schemata to know the meaning of a passage.

This thesis attempts to apply schema theory to the study of reading comprehension so as to provide English readers with an effective reading method. This thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter gives a general introduction of schema theory. It is composed of four parts which is the definition of schema, features of schema, types of schema and the functions of schema. The second chapter deals with second language comprehension. It analyzes reading comprehension and the importance of the reading comprehension. The third chapter introduces how to practical application of schema theory in Senior High School.

Chapter One Schema Theory

1.1 The definition of Schema

Schema is a psychological definition which was first put out by Bartlett, who was a British psychologist. In the 1970s, an artificial intelligence expert named Rumelhart did a lot of research, established and developed the theory. Stored knowledge and its structure play a key role in people?s cognitive activities. According to the theory, the knowledge is stored in human brain by these units, such units are the Schemata.

Schema theory describes the process by which readers combine their own background knowledge with the information in a text to comprehend that text. All readers carry different schemata (background information) and these are also often culture-specific. This is an important concept in teaching, and prereading tasks are often designed to build or activate the learner's schemata.

Schema theory is based on the belief that "every act of comprehension involves one's knowledge of the world as well" (Anderson et al. in Carrell and Eisterhold 1983:73). Thus, readers develop a coherent interpretation of text through the interactive process of "combining textual information with the information a reader brings to a text" (Widdowson in Grabe 1988:56). Readers' mental stores are termed 'schemata' (after Bartlett in Cook 1997:86) and are divided (following Carrell 1983a) into two main types: 'content schemata' (background knowledge of the world) and 'formal schemata' (background knowledge of rhetorical structure). This speech mainly discusses Content Schemata and its application.

1.2The Features of Schema

In the above we introduced much more about schema and schema theory. Though there are different explanations for schema, there is a very large area of overlap among them. Now it is necessary to summarize the common features of schema. (Xie Yanfang, 2011: 189)

①The basic configuration of a schema consists of labeled slots, Which can be filled with expressions, or fillers. Whenever people perceive a conceptual signal, the memory search in cognitive system will activate the slots of its schema automatically.

A slot activated means that the slot is filled with filler. For example, in a schema representing “shopping schema”, there are some slots labeled “character” (purchasers, sellers), “objective” (currency and merchandise), and “goal” (go shopping, purchasers bargain with sellers, pay money for something and take it home). We can activate the situation by integration of all these elements.

②Schemata possess the hierarchical structures. Knowledge is stored not in lists, but in hierarchies. Within these hierarchies are schemata which are embedded in other schemata, which contain sub-schemata. For example, one of the components of a school schema could be a more detailed sub-schema about teachers or students. The cognition of the upper rank schemata depends on the understanding of the lower rank schemata, which resembles net work.

③Schemata are not fixed, but rather changeable over time. They can be added to, and develop to include more fillers and more specificities. They may also be reorganized when incoming information reveals a need to restructure the original schemata. They are changeable and can be modified according to the new information and experiences people acquire. To the new information, people can have three different reactions: accretion, structuring and tuning, among which the latter two demonstrate schema relativity to an individual.

Schema located in the mind will influence or govern the understanding of the new information. Therefore, when people get to know the new matters, they always manage to associate the known information with the unknown information, which will propel the understanding of the new information. When we are exposed to the same stimuli in the texts, the pre-existing knowledge is activated and employed to give a proper interpretation of the texts. Therefore, textual-processing is a process of retrieving prior knowledge in the mind.

1.3The Types of Schema

1.3.1 Linguistic schema

Linguistic schema refers to readers? existing language proficiency in vocabulary, grammar and idioms. They are the foundation of other two schemata. As it is known to all, linguistic knowledge plays an essential role in text comprehension ability. Without linguistic schemata, it is impossible for the reader acquires information and the better understanding the reader may get. We assume that a large vocabulary is the main obstacle in learning to read and believe that “the lack of such vocabulary may be the greatest single obstacle of fluent reading.” Thus, to some degree, the more linguistic schemata a reading has in his mind, the faster the reader acquires information and the better the reader may understand.

1.3.2 Formal schema

Formal schema refers to the organizational forms and rhetorical structures of written texts. They include knowledge of different text types and general, and also include the knowledge that different types of texts organizations, language structures, vocabulary, grammar and level of formality differently. Formal schemata are described as abstract, encoded, internalized, coherent pattern of meta-linguistic, discourse and textual organization that guide expectation in out attempts to understand a meaning piece of language. Readers use their schematic representations of the text such as fictions, poems, essays, newspaper articles, academic articles in magazines and journals to facilitate comprehension of the information in the text.

1.3.3 Content schema

Content schema refers to the background knowledge of the content area of a text, or the topic a text talks about. They include topic familiarity, cultural knowledge and previous experience with a field. Content schemata deal with the knowledge relative to the content domain of the text, which is the key to the understanding of texts. So content schemata are also called topic schemata (Wallace, 1992). Since one language is not only the simple combination of vocabulary, sentence structure and grammar but also the bearer of different levels of the language?s culture. To some extent, content schemata can make up for the lack of language schemata, and thus help learners understand texts by predicting, choosing information and removing ambiguities. In general, the familiarity of the topic has a direct influence on readers comprehension.The more the reader knows about the topic,the more easily and quickly he gets the information of the text.

1.4 The Functions of Schema

It is worthwhile to scrutinize that how schema functions to gear one comprehending, perceiving, performing and so on. Anderson and Pichert, and Howard shed light on the issue by presenting the following points:

Firstly, schema facilities one?s comprehension by providing ideational scaffolding to

assimilate text information. “To understand something is to select a schema that provides a plausible account of it, and thus allows us assimilate it to something we know.”

Secondly, schema provides a means of perception. A large quantity of date has to be filtered, analyzed and interpreted before being formed into schema and stored in a person?s mind. Schema may have an effect on the information a person actually takes in. We select date and form schema by absorbing a limited amount of information and extracting what is the most important for our purposes.

Thirdly, schema enables one to get a coherent interpretation of a situation by providing the basis for inferential elaboration. For example, almost every adult has a schema of examination and thus does not need to be told that he should sit down, take out a pen and answer the question without talking with others. On the other hand, schema can make up for the gaps by following the existing information. For example, suppose a person can not find his telephone, if he is sure that he took it when he left home, and he has only been to the library, he will be able to infer that the telephone might be left in the library.

Fourthly, schema allows orderly searches of memory by providing the reader with a guide to the types of information that need to be recalled.

Finally, schema facilities generalizing the information. Since a schema contains within itself criteria of importance, it provides summaries by giving priority to the relatively significance propositions and omitting trivial ones. These functions are not separable with a clear boundary but rather integrated with each other to regulate one?s cognitive performance. Therefore, a person should accumulate background knowledge as much as possible in order to establish schema, which are available to function in due course.

Chapter Two Teaching Reading in Middle School

2.1 Reading comprehension

Generally speaking, “Reading is an active process during which the reader tries to understand the meaning of a given text for learning and getting information, which means that English reading can help you extend your general knowledge of the world.”But what is English reading? “English reading has always been considered one of the most important parts of foreign language learning. Without reading, nothing can be done in the development of the competence in listening, speaking, writing and translation. Which success in every other academic area is based.”English reading is not just the ability to recognize words, articulate words and pronounce words. English reading is a communication with different authors. It?s a benefit weapon to rich your brain. Also English reading is the key to strive for success in English learning.

2.2 The Types of Reading Process

Reading instruction to EFL learners lies on students?reading process. It is of great significance for teachers to explore reading process and generalize modes of

reading process. Generally speaking, linguists believe that there are two basic modes of information processing: bottom-up and top-down processing. Schema theory calls for gradually recognize the necessity of interactive approach.

The bottom-up process proposes basically that reading is a process of building symbols into words, words into sentences, and sentences into the overall meaning. It comes from the smallest textual units to large ones and then comes to the interpretation of the whole text (Nunan, 1991:235). This model reflect traditional attitudes towards reading, the reader begins with lowest level, features of symbols, from which the symbols are identified. In the process readers reconstruct the author?s intended meaning by recognizing the printed letters and words, and build up a meaning for the text.

While bottom-up processing stresses the decoding of language forms, top-down processing attaches great significance to the construction of meaning. The top-down process is used to refer to approaches in which the expectations of the reader play a crucial, even dominant role in the processing of the text. The processing assumes that on reading readers have some hypotheses about the meaning kept in mind (Nunan, 1991). The reader is seen as bringing hypotheses to bear on the text, and using the text data to confirm or deny the hypotheses. That is, the reader reads a text with some expectations or hypotheses about the meaning, and that kind of reading process moves in a linear way from the top, the higher level mental stages, down to the text itself.

Schema theory tends to the interactive model of reading. In interactive processing, top-down processing and bottom-up processing occur at all levels of analysis simultaneously. It is a complex and simultaneous processing of background information, contextual information and linguistic information, which permits comprehension and interpretation to take place (Celce-murcia, 2000). Bottom-up processing makes the data needed to illustrate or fill out the schemata available; top-down processing facilitates data assimilation or is consistent with the reader?s conceptual set. Bottom-up processing ensures that the reader will be sensitive to information that is novel or that does not fit his ongoing hypotheses about the content of the text. Top-down processes help him to resolve ambiguities or select between alternative possible interpretations of the incoming date. Through the interaction between top-down and bottom-up processing, the flow of information through the system if constrained. Even so, these processes are not in themselves enough to ensure apt comprehension. Therefore, teachers?assistance in reading can be a vital guarantee to comprehension.

Interactive processing cannot proceed without teachers?assistance, so teachers?task in reading instruction is to help their students to interpret or reconstruct the meaning that the writer had in mind when he wrote the article. According to interactive model, teachers should help students improve their cultural background knowledge, knowledge of the target language, and knowledge of the text structure, because all these factors interact with each other and compensate each other in the process of reading. In the new textbook New Senior English for China, reading activities are divided into three stages: pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. This arrangement is based on the understanding of interactive processing.

2.3 Reading Comprehension and the Importance of Reading Teaching

As is known to us all, reading is one of the four essential skills in English language learning. Since most students in our country have more opportunity to read English matters than to converse with an English speaker, it's of great importance for secondary school students to have sufficient training to develop their ability to read. But numerous facts have proved that most of secondary school graduates don't really know how to read. To many of them, only reading aloud is reading. This is because many teachers only emphasize the importance of reading aloud. They neglect the far more useful and important skill of reading silently. Thus how to teach reading widely and effectively has become a problem of great importance.

Reading is important not only because it is the main access to knowledge but also because it is one of the four useful skills in learning a foreign language. Reading teaching plays a very important part in the whole of English teaching in middle schools; also it is a key means to train the students' capacity for reading comprehension. For Chinese people, reading is not only the purpose of English study, but also the important and chief way of studying English. Undoubtedly, whether the students have obtained the capacity for reading comprehension will greatly affect their further study of the language in the future.

In middle school, text is the center and also the best teaching form and integrated teaching material in which the students learn phonetic, vocabulary and grammar and gain the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Text is used to have reading comprehension training and keep the student constantly interested in learning English. According to contents of the textbook, two periods of reading teaching are required for each unit. The reading materials contain so much information and they are rich in various of useful knowledge. So reading is the teaching emphasis in each unit. In fact, it greatly affects the teaching process of English. So, reading comprehension of the text is put special emphasis on.

I talk about reading teaching in middle school because I personally regard reading to be very important. For Chinese students, most of the children begin to learn English in primary school and continue the study with sentence drills and patterns as main work. In this period, listening and speaking are paid more attention to. While in middle school, students are eager to gain more knowledge to enrich their knowledge on the second language. The main task for teachers is help the students form a good habit of reading, seek and clear up useful information. The Senior English for China (SEFC) textbook provides a variety of reading materials ranging from history, geography, culture, customs and inhabitants in English-speaking countries. So making full use of the reading materials is one of the most import tasks during the fundamental stage in English teaching. What?s more, reading test is occupying a large part in the National Matriculation English Test (NMET) year by year, with the score taking up 1/3 of the whole. In 2003 NMET, five reading passages composed the reading comprehension part with a total number of words, 2,193. So without systematic and regular reading training, students will surely get lost in the final stage of English revision, especially in the year of grade 3. Reading teaching goes with reading training well will lead to success of English revision.

I highlight reading not only it is the most important task in class but also it is the most useful and important skill in learning English out of class. The time as well as the reading material is much too limited in class. So making full use of time out of class is of great importance. The teacher should help the students choose reading materials which are helpful to foster the students? ability to study on their own. The amount of reading out of class should reach a level of 200,000 words according to the requirement in the syllabus.

“Reading makes a full man” (Francis Bacon), however, I want to say extensive reading makes a well-formed man. Due to constant-changing knowledge and fast-paced modern life, we should keep well informed if we really want to keep pace with fast-developing society. We can get to know a lot of things hardly to be known form the social circle we live in. At this point, reading extensively can really help us. Because of the reasons of money, time and so on, we may not be able to travel all the time. But reading extensively can solve this problem. When you are reading, you feel that you are witnessing something real.

Taking into account of all these factors, we can easily find out that reading is really a good way of learning, and is an effective method to solve the problems we have met.

2.3 The students should master the reading skills

One of the most comprehensive typology of reading strategies is that developed by teachers at Chinese University of Hong Kong. They note that by choosing the best strategies for different texts and purpose, it is possible for second language readers to significantly increase both their reading speed and their reading comprehension. The student should master the reading strategies are as follow:

①Having a purpose. It is important for students to have a clear purpose and keep in mind what they want to gain from the text.

②Skimming. Look quickly through the text to get a general idea of what it is about.

③Scanning. Look quickly through the text in order to locate specific information.

④Using background knowledge. Using what one already knows to understand new ideas.

⑤Identifying genres. Identifying the overall organizational pattern of the text.

⑥Identifying paragraph structure. Identifying the organizational structure of a paragraph, e.g. whether it follows an inductive or deductive pattern.

⑦Identifying sentence structure. Identifying the subject and the main verb in a complex sentence.

⑧Using background knowledge. Using what one already knows to understand new ideas.

Chapter Three Application of schema theory in teaching reading

3.1 Main Problems in English Reading

Teachers often look for insight and possible approaches from well-established language theories and researches. However, our language theory may not be completely applied to foreign language reading process because of different situations, motivations and perspectives of foreign language readers.

The basic problems are: first, learners do not have a fully developed phonological system when they begin to read, Therefore, the Bottom-up Models that depend on the learner?s encoding of the text into phonological symbols or internal speech can not be applied directly to the process; second, learners are adolescent or adult learners already literate in native language. They have relatively highly developed native language vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, topical and rhetorical schemata, and varying native language reading strategies. Still for learners, the cultural differences can make the activation of appropriate schemata differences can make the activation of appropriate schemata difficult. The complexity in contexts must lead researchers and teachers to be cautious with their results and with possible suggestions from native language reading contexts.

What causes this kind of reading difficulty in that the readers are lacking of some cultural background knowledge of the content area of a text, and it can help broaden the reader?s background knowledge.

3.2 The Strategies of Constructing Schema

Reading is a constant process of selecting information, checking information and using information. To elaborate the application of the schema theory in teaching reading, the author plans …pre-reading?, …while-reading?, and …post-reading?stages. These stages can help us understand the function of schema in reading comprehension.

3.2.1 Pre-reading stage

At the pre-reading stage, the teacher has two things to do at the pre-reading. As is known to us the background knowledge of the article is very important to the comprehension. Therefore, to arrange the reading materials, we must to pay attention to the choice of the materials that have different styles, pages and structures. But we must regard the schema theory as the guide in the process of arranging reading materials.

According to the schema theory, the background knowledge is made up of many schema units. But the content and style of one article should be allocated in a schema unit. In other word, more topics are not required to be discussed in an article or it will make the students pay their attention to the language knowledge and the skill of solving a problem. It is not good for the students to make comprehension and enlarge their background knowledge. One is to supply the students the background knowledge and help them to build the new content schemata. Because the students are short of English background knowledge, maybe they will have no content schemata to start in their reading. The other thing for the teacher is to activate the suitable content

schemata, which the students have had. Let us take the reading text Table Manners at a Dinner Party for an example. Before the class, teacher can ask students to list something that may appear in a Chinese dinner party. Then the teacher can ask about western dinner party, some of them may share their ideas, and finally show then some pictures and give some information about it.

3.2.2 While-reading stage

At the while-reading stage, the main role is the students, it is important for the students to comprehend the whole article all-round and rightly. So the teacher not only needs to teach the knowledge of language and form, but also needs to analyze and grasp the whole article. It is to help the students establish a schema of the text structure. So in this period, firstly the teacher can ask students to guess the main idea of the text from the title, and then asks them to divide the whole text into several parts. This task is to let students get the general idea and structure of the text. Then the teacher can ask students to make an outline of the text by answering questions given to them. This task is to help them understand the content and form the schema further.

3.2.3 Post-reading stage

Post-reading is a synthetic stage of consolidating schema. As we all know, the time spending in the while-reading stage is quite limited. So the importance of post-reading can not be ignored.

At the post-reading stage, the teacher can hold kinds of activities by connecting the reading materials with the students?experience, knowledge, interested and opinions. The teacher can provide some T&F questions to consolidate their understanding of the text and ask some students to come to the blackboard to draw a picture of how the table for a dinner party in western countries is laid and how about in China and then leave them an assignment: write an article on how to behave at a dinner party.

Conclusion

From the above discussion of schema theory and its application to the teaching

of reading,we call see the reading is an interactive process of new information and prior knowledge. And it must be based on the linguistic knowledge. According to clues offered by the text and their prior background knowledge, students can make rational prediction and finish reading successfully. A lot of experiment proves that schema theory plays an important role in English reading comprehension. And the more students? schemata for information, the more activated schemata in reading. A lack of certain schema or unsuccessful activation of schema would be possible to

result in failure in understanding reading texts. Therefore,it is necessary for teachers to pay attention to the importance of applying schema theory in teaching reading. In other words, teachers use strategies for activating and building up students? linguistic and content schemata. In a word, teachers attach importance to enlarging their vocabulary and helping them master basic grammar knowledge. And based on suitable methods, teachers are supposed to enrich and build up students? content schema. Thus while teachers are teaching linguistic knowledge, they don?t n eglect the importance of background knowledge. In that case, making best use of their rich background knowledge and their superior level of language, students can make logical and rational prediction so that they are able to comprehend the whole text exactly and improve their reading ability.

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Acknowledgements

I am a lucky student to have such kind and respectable supervisor Miss Shan, to whom I would like to express my sincere gratitude for her valuable guidance. I have benefit form her comments and suggestions. But for her constant support, the improvement and completion of this paper would have been impossible.

I also want to express my heartfelt gratitude to all the teachers at Quanzhou Normal University, whose lectures have broadened my vision in the field of English language.

I would also like to thank my classmate .It is their love and encouragement that have supported me all the time.

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