Chapter One Literature review
1.1 General review of schema theory
Schema theory was first come up with by a famous philosopher ImmanuelKant in the late 1700s who maintained the importance of background knowledge incomprehension. Jean Piaget, a well-known psychologist, introduced and utilized theterm schema in his work. According to Piaget's theory, a schema is the category ofknowledge as well as the process of acquiring that knowledge.Then Gestalt psychologists Anderson & Pearson (1984) introduced the termschema in 1984. Rumelhart (1980), an artificial intelligence expert, elaborated theschema notion further based on Bartlett’s theory during 1970s and 1980s. At thesame time, Carrell, who makes a great contribution to schema theory, put forward“ modern schema theory” in 1983. In 1987, Hirsch proposes that schemata areessential to literacy in two major ways.All in all, schema theory has developed a great deal and drawn manyresearchers’ attention in the 1980s. Since the study is on reading teaching under the guidance of schema theory, itis of great necessity to review the definition of schema.Jean Piaget(1928) defined schema as a series of well-organized knowledgesystem stored in one’s mind. Jean Piaget(1928) explains the stages of cognitivedevelopment that as experiences happen and new information is presented, newschemata are developed.
…………
1.2 Reading teaching
What is well known to all is that reading is one of the important ways to acquireknowledge and acts as a bridge between the reader and the writer. Not only is the natureof reading to grasp the language symbols, but also it is involved in a lot of factors which have great influence on comprehension.During the process of reading, the reader tries his best to decode the language andperceive potential intention hidden in printed words. It is a complex cognitive process inwhich readers get to the reader gets to reconstruct by connecting what they read to whatthey know before. The more the reader is exposed to authentic reading materials, thebetter the reader will comprehend British and American culture. Generally speaking, theability to read English materials is an essential skill to have access to the advancedacademic field.In early 1960s, cognitive psychologists set about doing a series of empiricalresearches on reading. From their research, it can be seen that reading process is acomplicated cognitive activity that takes place in the mind. So it is much better for thereader to involve himself into reading process actively. Obviously, the reader’s thoughtinteracts with the writer’s language symbols to construct new meaning.As Goodman (1967) put, reading comprehension is a psycholinguistic guessinggame. According to this definition, the object of that game is not to recognize letters andwords but to construct meaning. It is crucial for the reader to make sense of print, topredict what comes next and rebuild up meaning. The reader’s prior knowledge andexperience can assist himself to understand the author’s real intention. Hence, theinteractive process takes place perfectly.To conclude, reading is a process in which the reader combines language symbolswith his own background information to create meanings actively.
……….
Chapter Two Research Design
2.1 Research questions
Although both teachers and students attach great importance to reading in Englishlearning, a great many students can hardly get high reading scores or even lose interestand confidence in English reading. The author wants to probe if there is a way to solvesome of these problems. This thesis aims to apply schema theory to teaching practiceand the author will conduct relevant experiment so as to verify whether students’reading comprehension ability can be improved by employing schema-oriented teachingmodel.Moreover, the author wants to probe how to enrich students’ schemata and raisetheir reading efficiency. So research questions are as follows.
1. Can schema-oriented teaching approach help students raise students’ interestand build their confidence in reading?
2. Can students’ reading ability and speed be enhanced with schema-orientedteaching model if the teacher assists students to activate prior schemata and build newschemata?
3. Can students improve their reading comprehension ability by understanding thepassage wholly and form good reading strategies with the new teaching model?
……….
2.2 Subject selection
In the experiment, the subjects were from He Jing Senior School, He Jing county,Xinjiang Autonomous Region. There were 14 classes in Grade One and two classes thatthe author has been teaching were selected as the subjects of this experiment. The totalnumber of the subjects was 90. Nearly all of them came from rural areas, students’English ability was relatively poor, let alone students’ reading comprehension ability.In addition, the students had difficulty in understanding reading materials as awhole because they knew little about relevant cultural background knowledge and paid little attention to effective reading strategies. Class 10 and Class 11 were chosen assubjects by the author. Class 10 was chosen as the experimental class and the other asthe control class. The two classes were thought parallel in academic level, whoseEnglish mean scores of the Entrance Examination stayed almost the same.
……….
Chapter Two Research Design.... 21
2.1 Research questions........ 21
2.2 Subject selection ..... 21
2.3 Instruments........ 22
2.3.1 Pre-test and post-test...... 22
2.3.2 Interview ...... 23
2.4 Techniques of application of schema theory in EFL reading teaching ....... 24
2.5 Research procedure....... 35
2.5.1 Classroom experiment ......... 35
2.5.2 Teaching model........ 36
2.5.3 A sample lesson in experimental class......... 37
Chapter Three Data collection and Analysis....... 45
3.1 Data collection and analysis of pre-test and post-test......... 45
3.2 Data collection and analysis of the interview ......... 50
3.3 Findings ...... 52
Chapter Three Data collection and Analysis
3.1 Data collection and analysis of pre-test and post-test
The pre-test is held on August 20, 2012 and the post-test on December 26, 2012.The author collected the results of pre-test and post-test in EC and CC . Data wereanalyzed by SPSS 18.0.The author carried out Paired Sample T Test four times to see whether there issignificant difference. Firstly, Table 3.1 reflects whether there is remarkable differencebetween EC and CC before the experiment and Table 3.2 is used to show if there existsgreat difference after the experiment. Secondly, Table 3.3 demonstrates whetherstudents have made some progress before and after the experiment in EC. Lastly, Table3.4 illustrates if both high-group students and low-group students have benefited fromthe schema-oriented teaching model. Below are the four tables and the author willanalyze them in detail.
………
Conclusion
Main findings will be summarized and implications for reading comprehensionteaching as well as shortcomings of the experiment will be stated.The aim of the thesis is to test whether students’ reading ability can be improvedwith the schema-oriented teaching model. The author centered on several key researchquestions in the experiment. Finally, there are three main findings. Apparently studentstake more interest in reading and enhance their reading ability after 4-month training ofschema-oriented teaching. On the other hand, a variety of activities in the class activate,build and consolidate students’ background information efficiently. The author finds itimpossible for readers to comprehend and interpret reading materials withoutbackground knowledge.In this paper, several different activities have been introduced. Students arewilling to take part in them and benefit a lot. Gradually, they can accumulate theirbackground knowledge and wholly comprehend the reading materials. After theinformal interview and two tests, the author has come to realize that inadequate relevantschemata are a cause of reading failure. With enough background knowledge andcomprehensible cultural input concerning the topics, students’ interest and desire toexplore is motivated greatly. Naturally, learners’ reading ability has been improved.
…………
Reference (omitted)
