In China, both teachers and students in middle schools realize that English reading is so important that they spend much time and energy on it。 Fostering students’ reading ability is teachers’ main work。 However, the current situation of reading teaching existing in Chinese middle schools is not optimistic。 The traditional model based on Grammar-translation approach is still widely applied in the EFL classroom, which is characterized by grammar teaching and teacher-centered instruction。 Under this model, the teacher is the center of the class, and usually spends a large amount of time explaining the text word by word, sentence by sentence。 As a result, the students hardly have the chance to actively participate in the reading process and they only understand the meaning of the single sentences instead of grasping the integrity of the text。 论文网

On the purpose of improving students’ reading abilities of English, this thesis mainly discusses how to apply schema theory in English reading instruction。 The thesis first gives a brief introduction to the necessity of learning English reading and the present situation existing in middle schools’ reading teaching。 Next, it presents a literature review on the relationship between schema theory and reading and the previous researches on schema theory。 Then it focuses on the definition, types and functions of schema theory。 After expounding on the theoretic support--schema theory, the application of schema theory in English reading teaching is elaborated。 At the end of the thesis, it provides some implications to EFL teachers in reading class。 

2。 Literature Review

To understand the schema theory better, first of all, it is of importance to learn a bit about the relationship between schema theory and reading。 Next, this section will make a relatively thorough review of previous researches on schema theory in reading teaching aboard and at home。

2。1 Relationship between schema theory and reading

 The emergence of schema theory in 1960s pushed cognitive science into a new level。 Schema as a core concept of the theory is an abstract information structure, which originally come from Gestalt psychology。 The main representatives of modern schema theory are known as Anderson, Rumelhart and Carrell, and so on。 They have perfected modem schema theory。 Schemata are knowledge structures or structural networks stored in minds explaining people’s understanding and awareness to the world。 In others words, schemata refer to an organized chunk of information, knowledge or experience。 Schema theory claims that readers possess different background knowledge。 Everyone has a specific store of knowledge gained through a lifetime of experience。 The essence of reading processing is to activate the reader’s existing schema, which is an interactive processing。 The author, linguist Johnson from the US thinks reading as a bridge between the new and known knowledge。 That is when people understand new things, they need to link them with known concept and experience (i。e。 Background knowledge), and the degree of understanding depends on existing schema in their minds。 This also explains why readers can not comprehend a text with all unfamiliar subjects even if they grasp the meaning of each word。 Howard (1987) pointed out that the role of schema is not only facilitating us to perceive the world but also facilitating us to understand language。 As Goodman summarized “Reading is a selective process。 It involves partial use of available minimal language cues selected from perceptual input on the basis of the reader’s expectation。 As this partial information is processed tentative decisions are made to be confirmed, rejected or refined as reading progresses。” Hence, most reading researchers believe that schema is the driving force in the reading comprehension process。

2。2 Previous researches on schema theory in reading teaching abroad and at home