The_Application_of_Schema_Theory_in_English_Reading_Teaching_in_Senior_High_Schools[1]

The aim of the study is to explore how to effectively teach English reading more effectively in senior high schools. Based on schema theory, the thesis probes into the process of teaching reading as thoroughly as possible. The study finds out that the teacher can apply schema theory to teaching English reading, which can be presented in two aspects: Firstly, reading is an interactive process. Thus, the teacher should stimulate students‟ schemata by combining the “bottom-up” model and the “top-down”model. Secondly, there are three major types of schemata，namely, linguistic schemata, content schemata and formal schemata .Thus ,we can apply schema to teaching reading in terms of its three aspects. Compared with previous studies, the study puts forward that the key point of teaching reading is to enable students to grasp the meaning of a passage and the meaning of a passage can be leveled into two parts: the surface meaning and the deep meaning.; in order to understand these two levels of meaning, in the process of teaching reading, the teacher should guide students to apply different types of schemata to know the meaning of a passage. This study is merely a preliminary tryout; I hope it can be helpful to teach English reading in senior high schools
Key words:teaching reading schema theory meaning
本次研究的目的在于探索如何更有效地教高中生英语阅读课。

本次研究以图示理论为理论基础，对阅读教学过程的本质深入探索。

研究发现可以应用图示理论进行阅读教学，这体现在以下两点：第一，阅读是个互动的过程，教师需要结合“自下而上”和“自上而下”两种模式，激发学生已有的图示。

第二，由于图示分为语言图示，内容图示和形式图示，因此可以从这三方面分别应用于英语阅读教学。

比较已往的研究，本次研究在阅读教学的关键方面提出了阅读教学的关键是教会学生理解文章的意义,并且文章的意义是可以分层次的:表层含义和深层含义；为了掌握文章的两层含义，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。

为了本次研究还是一个初步的尝试，希望能对提高高中生英语阅读能力有所裨益。

关键词：阅读，图示理论，应用
Contents
Abstract (i)
摘要 (ii)
1. Introduction (1)
1.1 Literature review (1)
1.2 Thesis structure ...................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。

2. The process of reading comprehension and the process of teaching reading错误！未定义书签。

2.1 The process of reading comprehension .................................. 错误！未定义书签。

2.2 The process of teaching reading............................................. 错误！未定义书签。

3. Schema theory (3)
3.1 The definition of “schema” (3)
3.2 The types of schemata (3)
3.2.1 Linguistic schemata (3)
3.2.2 Content schemata (4)
3.2.3 Formal schemata (4)
4. Application of schema theory in teaching reading. (5)
4.1 The application of linguistic schemata in teaching vocabulary in reading (5)
4.2 The application of content schemata in teaching reading (10)
4.3. The application of formal schemata in teaching reading (8)
5. Conclusion (10)
References (13)
The Application of Schema Theory in English Reading
Teaching in Senior High Schools
1. Introduction
According to the English Curriculum for Chinese senior high schools, students should be able to understand simple works of English literature effectively and read more than 300,000 words. In English study, Reading plays a dominant role among the four skills in the foreign language Acquisition. It is the foundation to improve students‟ listening, speaking, and writing and translation abilities. Students may sometimes have difficulty with English reading comprehension, which is the result of the traditional teaching methods of reading. Traditional steps of these teaching methods are as follows: (1) Students should read the text in advance and look up the new words in the dictionary; (2) The teacher may explain the meaning of the text, analyze the grammar structure and then expound the difficult language points; (3) The teachers will ask students to do the post- reading exercises and then explain them. Obviously, this teaching pattern focuses on the development of language learning and the understanding of the sentences meaning only, claiming that the meaning of a text is not related to the author and readers but the contents. Then reading is considered as
a passive understanding process.
1.1 Literature review
Theorists have different opinions on reading. The traditional opinions regarded reading as a passive (bottom-up) decoding process. It is thought that “meaning is embodied in the text and the reader can extract the meaning from the print if he
understands it letter by letter and word by word.” (Goodman, 1988, p.44) Reading is viewed “primarily as a decoding process of reconstructing the author‟s intended meaning via recognizing printed letters and words, and building up a meaning for a text from the smallest textual units at the “bottom”(letters and words)to larger and larger units at the “top‟‟(phrases, clauses, intersentential linkages).”(Goodman, 1988, p.47) Problems in SL/FL reading are viewed as being essentially decoding problems, deriving meaning from print. This is the so-called bottom-up, or text-based view. This bottom-up manner of reading often results in word-to-word reading and causes miscomprehension.
A different view from Bottom-up model believes that “one‟s background knowledge plays a more important role than new words and new structures in reading comprehension.”(Rumelhart, 1988, p.47) It believed that “in teaching reading, the teacher should teach the background knowledge first so that students equipped with such knowledge will be about to guess meaning from the printed page.” (Rumelhart, 1988, p.47) In this view, fluent readings do not pay attention to words but use their past experiences to predict meaning as they read. Obviously, this top-down model often easily leads to “wild guessing” and misunderstanding.
Therefore, it is worthwhile to ask the question:
What is the process of reading in nature?
Based on applied linguistics and psycholinguistics, the author of the thesis holds reading is an active process, or to be more exact, an interactive process. This more balanced view of reading posits a constant interaction between bottom-up and
top-down processes, “each source of information contributing to a comprehensive However, these studies have ignored the key question of teaching reading, which is to help students grasp the meaning of a passage. The meaning of a passage can be divided as surface meaning and deep meaning （Gail，1994，p56). Surface meaning can be described as literal meaning of words, main ideas and. details of a passage, main events and characters, time, place, order and so on. It mainly depends on the level of language knowledge and language skills （Gail，1994，p56).. Therefore,
3. Schema theory
3.1 The d efinition of “s chema”
S chema now refers to learners‟ acquired knowledge about the world, stored in the brain in the form of concept and activated by incentives. T aking “schema” as cognitive construction material was the basic rule for all information processing. “Schemata” represent ed not only knowledge itself, but also use of knowledge, i. e., the cognitive structure such as a series of cognitive scaffolding and strategies. （Rumelhart, 1985, p.728）
3.2 The types of schemata
3.2.1 Linguistic schemata
Linguistic schemata are about readers‟existing language proficiency in vocabulary, grammar and idioms .They lay the foundation of other schemata．It is known that linguistic knowledge plays an significant role in text comprehension. Without linguistic schemata, it is impossible for the reader to decode and comprehend
a text．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 impediment of fluent reading.”(Grabe, 1988, p.63) Thus，to some degree, the more linguistic schemata a reader has in his mind，the faster the reader acquires information and the better the reader may understand.
3.2.2 Content schemata
Content schemata refer to the background knowledge of the content area of a text，or the topic a text talks about．They cover topic familiarity, cultural knowledge and previous experience with a field．(Holub, 1984, p.67) Content schemata deal with the knowledge relative to the content domain of the text，which is the key to the understanding of texts. 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.
3.2.3 Formal schemata
Formal schemata refer to the organizational forms and rhetorical structures of written texts．They include knowledge of different text types and genres，and also include the knowledge that different types of texts employ different text organizations, language structures, vocabulary, grammar and level of formality. Formal schemata are described as abstract，encoded，internalized，coherent patterns of meta—linguistic，discourse and textual organization that guide expectation in our attempts to understand a meaning piece of language.(Holub, 1984, p.68) 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.
4. Application of schema theory in teaching reading.
4.1 The application of linguistic schemata in teaching vocabulary in reading
As we know, that vocabulary is the foundation of expressing and building up all kinds of schemata. However, the English vocabulary is so large that it is impossible and unnecessary for students to master all of it. Therefore, when dealing with unknown words teachers should help students activate their linguistic schemata so that they can guess the meanings of new words during reading comprehension. Some suggestions are as follows:
Using context to guess words
The most common skill used to acquire vocabulary suggested is guessing words in context. By this method, the teacher can ask students to do the following steps to help stimulate their linguistic schemata.
Guide students to guess its parts of speech, for example, whether it is a noun, a verb, an adjective, or an adverb according to the sentence in which the word is presented. For example:
On the eastern and western boundaries ,the country borders the two great oceans—the Atlantic and the Pacific. (M9U1 in advance with
English)
The word …borders‟is obviously a verb since there is no other verb in the sentence.
Guide them to explore the relationship between the sentence that contains the unknown word and other sentences or paragraphs. Some conjunctions like “if”, “but”, “because”, “as”, “when”, “otherwise”and “as a result‟‟may often show this relationship. Reference words like “this”, “that”, and “such”also provide useful information. For example:
They are still on display under the title of Elgin marbles and this has caused some friction between Greece and Britain as the Greek
government has never given up asking for the return of these marble
statues. (M9U2 in advance with English)
From the general meaning of the sentence, we can infer ,with the help of …as‟, that 4.2 The application of content schemata in teaching reading
Enrich the students’ background informat ion
According to the schema theory, a text only provides directions for the readers as to how they should construct meaning from their background knowledge. Comprehending a text is an interactive process between the readers‟ background knowledge and the text, and efficient comprehension requires the ability to relate the textual material to one‟s own knowledge. If the students have no enough relevant knowledge and comprehensible culture-based input to the text, they will fail to read and understand even the simplified text of a major field. One possible way to help the students to a much deeper understanding is to enrich their background information. That is to say, teachers should select or develop appropriate materials for students to read in order to help them minimize cultural misunderstanding and interference and to
maximize comprehension of reading materials. For instance, when teaching the reading part The Acropolis now(M9U2 in Advance With English), the teacher can present some pictures of The Acropolis ,such as Athens, the capital city of Greece, Aegean sea, the first Olympic Games, Athena and mythology, 2004 Olympic games, Elgin Marbles, etc.
Teach students to predict the content.
Before reading, teachers should make good use of the title of the text to let students predict the content. They can ask students to discuss the clues provided by the title and use the existing schemata to predict the new information in the text in order to have a clear direction in reading.
Take the title “Boy Missing, Police Puzzled” (M2U1 in advance with English) for example. The teacher can ask students to predict the main event of the article in many ways, such as ask them to create a story and act it out, to write words related to the title as much as possible and so on. If they are not good at predicting, the teacher can resort to some questions such as “why was the boy missing?” or “did the police find the boy at last?”Then students will find some clues of the article and easily understand it.
In detailed reading, require the students to have an overall and concise understanding of the text. For example, the teacher can present a table that is related to the content of the text for students to fill in, so that students may have a clear understanding of the text by getting the clues to fill in the table. For instance, when teaching Home Alone (M1U2 in advance with English)
After reading, check the extent to which the students can understand by means of doing post- reading exercises, and help them consolidate and accumulate the knowledge they have learnt. For example, When teaching the Curse of the Mummy (M2U3 in advance with English), the teacher can organize the students to hold an interview. Students can make a face-to-face interview, work in groups and act it out. By doing the role play, s tudents‟ knowledge of the content are consolidated.
4.3. The application of formal schemata in teaching reading
Ellis states that conscious rising directed at specific structure can result in subsequent noticing of these structures in input, and this noticing may help retention of the structures.(Ellis, 1994, p.45) Widdowson (1983) also states that effective comprehension depends on t he reader‟s ability to relate what is being read to a familiar pattern or schema (p.287). So we should gradually introduce different text patterns to students and teach them some features of different kinds of texts in order
to develop their competence in text patterns. A well-written text is often put in a logical pattern. Recognizing the pattern will enable students to better understand what they are reading. Followings are four main text patterns:
Argumentative pattern
Expositional pattern
Descriptive pattern:
Narrative pattern
For instance, when teaching Boy Missing ,Police Puzzled (M2U1 in advance with English), we can stimulate or construct students schema of the structure of a news story .this is a typical news story, written in an Inverted Pyramid Format, the broad, most general information is given first, then the details
Inverted Pyramid Format:
LEAD
Who? What? Where? When?
Detail 1 Detail 2 Detail 3
Final Detail
5. Conclusion
The thesis probes into teaching English reading in senior high schools. The study has found out that teaching reading is a complicated cognitive transfer process in which students combine the perceptive information with the acquired knowledge structure, completing the integration and reconstruction of new schema. This has been
embodied into three aspects. First of all, s tudents‟ declarative knowledge of reading materials, procedural knowledge of language and syntax, as well as strategic knowledge of reasoning and monitoring, are all important factors in reading comprehension. What‟s more, they may subsequently employ knowledge and skills acquired through reading in their training of listening, speaking, writing and translating, in which reading result can be tested. The last but not the least, the problem schema accumulated through teacher‟s long-term teaching practice is procedural rules for effective teaching because it activates the inner mechanism of students‟ cognitive development.
Based on the research above, the author holds that it is suitable to apply schema theory into teaching reading.
In the process of application to teaching, we should pay attention to the following aspects.(1) Selecting materials are totally teachers‟ subjective judgment .It is challenging for teachers to make correct decisions about when to give proper clues to guide their understanding and how to effectively activate their schemata. Teachers should get good training and apply different strategies based on different situations. (2) It seems difficult to draw a clear line among the three types of schemata. (3) Schema theory is more adaptable to readers with higher linguistic proficiency. When lower - level processing is still a problem; no literal meaning will be produced as resource to associate with relevant schema. This thesis only scratches parts of the problems of reading instruction. Problems in this field cannot be completely covered and solved until research in other aspects of the issue can be conducted to complement it ,such as
reading strategy , readers‟ cognition style and level , cultural background and linguistic competence improvement and so on and so forth.
References
Eskey, D. E. (1988) Holding in the Bottom: An Interactive Approach to the Language Problems of Second Language Readers, (93-111). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goodman, K. (1988).Interactive Approaches to Second Language Reading .Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,.
Gail, E. (1994) Learning to Learn English: A Course in Learner Training. . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grabe, W & Stoller, F. (2002). Teaching and Researching Reading. Harlow,Essex: Pearson Education.
Heilman, A. W., Blair, T. R & Ruply, W. H. (1990). Principles and practices of teaching reading .London: Merrill Publishing Company.
Holub, R. (1984) Reception Theory. London: Methuen Co. Ltd.
Kate Wilson and Yang Lianrui(2007) A Social Constructivist Approach To Teaching Reading: Turning The Rhetoric Into Reality
Rumelhart, D. (1985). Toward an Interactive Model of Reading. (pp.722- 750) Newark,DE: International Reading Association.
Widdowson, H. (1983). Learning Purpose and Language Use (pp. 287). London: Oxford University Press.
吴娜，“谈语篇模式在大学英语阅读教学中的应用”，《牡丹江师范学院学报(哲社版)》，2010 年，第1 期，1-3。