Schema Theory and College English Reading Teaching

Abstract

Reading plays a dominant role among the four skills in foreign language acquisition for college students. Unfortunately, over the past few decades, English teaching practice shows that Chinese students are vulnerable in it. Both their reading speed and their reading skills are far from being satisfactory. Schema theory presents a very efficient course in developing students' reading skills and improving their reading abilities. Based on a descriptive research, this paper aims to expound on the schema theory, its activation and construction on college English reading class. The research shows that the application of the theory is fulfilled throughout the whole reading process by designing various activities before, during and after the reading. The results testifies the assumption that its application is beneficial to cultivate students' reading interest, quicken their reading speed and make proper judgments.

The Effect of the CAREY Program on the Students’ Reading Attitude towards Reading English Materials

“…As stated by Nasr (2011:25), "the methods used for teaching reading skills in the Yemen schools so far are inappropriate and the teachers use the old method instead of using the appropriate technology and techniques of teaching reading". Zhao and Zhu (2012) also argued that the conventional method failed to improve and develop students' reading skills and increase their reading speed. The conventional teaching method is teacher-centered, which leads students to become passive learners in the whole teaching process.…”

Prior Knowledge in EFL Reading Comprehension: Native and Nonnative EFL Teachers’ Perceptions, Classroom Strategies and Difficulties Encountered

“…Surely, it can help students memorise new words or phrases in the reading, which then provides a strong foundation for the students reading and learning English. However, this model confines students to the learning of details (Zhao and Zhu, 2012). Rumelhart (1985:57) argued that 'one's background knowledge plays a more important role than new words and new structures in reading comprehension'.…”

“…Moreover, teachers may think that the techniques proposed in table 2 lead to automatic text comprehension without any attention to the types of these techniques. Zhao and Zhu (2012) argued that by asking questions at the pre-reading stage, teachers can create an active classroom atmosphere and arouse students' reading interest which makes them prone to using their previous knowledge. Whenever teachers or students decide on questions to be answered by reading, they are activating prior knowledge.…”

English language proficiency level of Higher Secondary level students in Nepal

“…For reading comprehension, Sadeghi & Ahmadi (2012) show the significance of the use of gloss, which is a definition of word given on the margin in a reading text. Similarly, application of schema theory (Zhao & Zhu, 2012), use of different model of reading like class discussion, and small group discussion (Shen, 2013;Hamra & Syatriana, 2012) teaching English through MI theory (Jing, 2013), adoption of cooperative learning (Pan & Wu, 2013), use of graphic organizer (D & Rajan, 2013), adoption of reading techniques of SQ3R i.e. survey, question, read, recite and review (Attaprechakul, 2013& Mohammadi, Heidari, & Niry, 2012, use of metacognitive reading strategy (Ahmadi, Ismail, & Abdullah, 2013), use of fill in the map version of concept map technique (Soleimani & Nabizadeh, 2012), use of novel as a reading text (Tsai, 2012), use of authentic material (Guo, 2012), focus on language based approaches and strategy based approaches (Park, 2013) are found effective techniques to enhance learners' reading comprehension.…”