英语专业毕业论文9

1、ContentsAbstract.(1)Introduction.(3)1. Schema Theory. (3) 1.1 The Definition of Schema.(3) 1.2 Three Types of Schema Theory.(4)1.3 The Relationship between the Reading Process and Schema(5)1.4 The Types of Reading Process.(6)2. A Practical Application of Schema Theory To the Teaching of EFL Reading

2、in Senior High School(7) 2.1 Pre-reading Activities(7) 2.1.1 Predicting(8) Brainstorming.(8) Semantic Mapping.(9)2.1.4 Pre-teaching Difficult Words and Phrases.(9) 2.2 While-reading Activities.(9) Skimming and Scanning.(10) Mid-text Predicting.(10) Making Inferences.(10)2.3 Post-reading Activities.(

3、10) Discussing.(11) Reproducing.(11)3. Enlightenment of Schema Theory to Foreign Language Reading Teaching.(12)3.1 Learner- centered Orientation in the Teaching of Reading.(12)3.2 Cultural Background Knowledge Oriented.(12)3.3 Reinforcing Awareness of Different Rhetorical Structures.(13)3.4 Training

4、 the Students to Form the Discourse Structure.(14)3.5 Encouraging Students Extensive Reading.(14)Conclusion. (14) References.(16)摘 要阅读是一种输入型语言技能，不仅在读者的二语习得中而且在促进国际间的交流合作方面也发挥极其重要作用。英语新课程标准(2003)中特别强调提高学生的阅读能力，发展学生的阅读技能技巧和阅读策略等。所以阅读教学理应是高中英语教学最重要的任务之一。因此，如何在新课标的指引下，改革我们的教学，从而激发学生的英语学习积极性成了关键问题。 本文的目的

5、是通过图式理论来指导英语教学以提高学生阅读学习的有效性。主要阐述了图式理论的概念，分类以及对英语教学的启示，最为重要的是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。图式理论已被广泛地用来说明阅读过程。许多语言学专家学者普遍认为:阅读理解是读者的背景知识与文章之间相互作用的过程,也是自上而下和自下而上两种处理方式相互作用的过程。本文结合中学阅读理解教学中的实践，从阐述图式理论的工作原理及图式的内容出发，提出了相关的英语阅读教学建议。 图式理论对英语教师的课堂教学起了积极的导向性作用。英语教师应该积极适应新的教学模式以丰富自己的教学实践，运用不同的教学方法来激活学生已有的图式知识，

6、也可以根据不同情况帮助学生建立新的图式，从而提高学生的英语阅读能力。关键词 图式理论; 应用; 英语阅读教学AbstractReading is an extremely useful skill and plays an extraordinarily important role in both second language acquisition and international communication and cooperation. The New English Curriculum Standards (2003) emphasizes strongly developi

7、ng 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 quite necessary to reform our teaching in English reading under the new curriculum, so as to help students acti

8、vate students learning enthusiasm.This study aims to improve the senior high students reading comprehension efficiently with schema-oriented teaching method. The thesis mainly explores the conception of schema theory, types of schema and the enlightenment of schema theory to the reading teaching. Ab

9、ove all, it is about how the students are trained in English reading under the guidance of schema theory by the teacher. Schema theory is widely used to illustrate the reading process. The general idea given by schematic theorists is that reading comprehension is an interactive process between the r

10、eaders background knowledge and the text; an interaction of bottom-up and top-down processing. The thesis mainly tries to elaborate on the practical application of schema theory to the teaching of EFL reading and also puts forward some pedagogical suggestions, which are promising for teachers to fac

11、ilitate the teaching of EFL reading. The schema theory is the guiding policy for teachers to teach English reading classes. English teachers should adapt new teaching approaches creatively to fit into teaching practices, using different methods to activate students existing schemata or helping stude

12、nts build new schemata according to different teaching situations, so that students reading abilities can be improved.Key Words schema theory; application; English reading teaching The Application of Schema Theory in English Reading Teaching in Senior High SchoolIntroductionReading, according to the

13、 new English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schools in China, is the core of English teaching. Fostering Senior High students reading ability is teachers main work and developing their reading competence becomes main part of their English learning performance. Therefore, development of reading

14、competence should be attached great importance to in the stage of Senior High School. However, some students are getting tired of learning English because of the dull and mechanical training, especially in reading comprehension. Although they have done plenty of examination exercises, including read

15、ing comprehension ones, their reading ability is little improved. In fact, our teaching practice is highly dominated and guided by examination-oriented teaching idea. Facing this arduous task, the general choice of both students and teachers is to do as many exercises extremely close to University E

16、ntrance Examination as possible directly without considering students personal reading interest, learning style and so on. In the process of reading, students become passive poor readers because of this mechanical training. During the year of my being a junior student in university, I learned some t

17、heories on language acquisition and language teaching research and I came to understand some latest reading theories on ESL&EFL, of which the schema theory closely relating to the teaching of Senior High students reading came into my mind. Whats more, when I experienced my practice as a student

18、teacher in Senior High School, I consulted the new textbook. Each unit in the textbook of the required course contains two reading texts on a topic. Reading is the principal part of each unit, and concrete requirements of reading are raised. In fact, the design of reading texts to some extent embodi

19、es the spirit of schema theory, so it is necessary to find out how students reading competence can be developed in the context of schema theory. For these reasons I chose reading research in Senior High School as my graduate thesis topic.1. Schema Theory 1.1 The Definition of Schema Schema theory pr

20、oposes that readers possess different conceptual frameworks which are patterns of background knowledge a person uses to make sense of events and information. More specifically, schemata are multiple knowledge structures including culture, beliefs, expectations, values and other past experiences that

21、 are used to comprehend the nature of things and events. There are many psychologists and researchers who have different ideas about the definition of schema. The term schema was first used by Bartlett in the sense that is used today. He defines schema as an active organization of past reactions, or

22、 past experience ( Bartlett, 1932:210). According to Anderson and Pearson (1988), a schema is an abstract knowledge structure that the readers bring to the text while reading. It is abstract in the sense that it summarizes what is known about a variety of cases that differ in many particulars. And i

23、t is structured in the sense that it represents the relationships among its component parts. Carrell and Eisterholds (1983) fundamental assumption of schema theory is that a text does not by itself carry meaning. It only provides directions for the reader to reconstruct meaning from his own previous

24、ly acquired knowledge. So they concluded that comprehension is an interactive process between the readers background knowledge and the text, and between new information and knowledge store.Rumelhart(1980) gave another definition that conceptualizes schema as more of a framework to investigate memory

25、 processes. A schema theory is basically a theory about knowledge. It is a theory about how knowledge is represented and about how that representation facilitates the use of the knowledge in particular ways. According to schema theory, all knowledge is packaged into units. These units are the schema

26、ta. Embedded in these packets of knowledge is, in addition to the knowledge itself, information about how this knowledge is to be used.From the above definitions, we may conclude that knowledge is constructed from experience and concepts stored in memory and does not exist on a page. Every of us has

27、 a uniquely personal store of knowledge gained through experiences in his or her life time. This stored knowledge along with its storage structure is called schema. 1.2 Three Types of Schema TheoryResearch on the theory of schema has had a great impact on our understanding of reading comprehension.

28、Researchers have identified several types of schemata. It is often said that there are three major types of schemata: language schema, content schema, and formal schema, which are closely related to the effect of reading comprehension. Language schema includes the decoding features needed to recogni

29、ze words and how they fit together in a sentence, that is, the basic knowledge of language. As we all know, basic language knowledge like vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure plays an important role in the understanding of a text especially at the elementary stage of learning. Any reading stra

30、tegy or skill would be useless for readers who lack basic vocabulary and grammar knowledge. Poor language schemata make the big obstacle and hindrance for fast reading and correct understanding. Therefore, the more language schemata the readers have in their minds, the faster they acquire informatio

31、n, and the better understanding they might achieve.Content schema refers to the background knowledge of the content area of a text or the topic a text talked about (Carrell, 1988:239). They include topic familiarity, cultural knowledge, and previous experience with a field. Content schema deals with

32、 the knowledge relative to the content domain of the text, which is the key to the understanding of texts. In fact, a readers failure to comprehend a given text may be due to the readers failure to activate appropriate schemata or to the absence of any appropriate schemata to activate. The importanc

33、e of content schema in EFL reading comprehension lies in a new consciousness of the fact that when an EFL reader doesnt comprehend a given text, he may not have a particular content schema. For example, an ESL reader comes across the word “Watergate”, can s/he catch the actual meaning or just its li

34、teral meaning? Watergate is an incident in the presidency of Richard Nixon that led to his resignation. Furthermore when s/he confronts the word “cover-up”, s/he will get confused. Why does one want to cover up Watergate? So here even fully linguistic schema cannot reach the fully understanding of t

35、he text if the reader lacks the knowledge of the event that happened in June 1972 when high officials on Nixons staff who had been connected to the burglary used illegal means to keep the burglary from being fully investigated.Formal schema refers to the organizational forms and rhetorical structure

36、s of the written text, i.e. how pieces of textual information will relate to each other and in what order details will appear (Carrell, 1987:461). It includes knowledge of different text types and genres, and also includes the knowledge that different types of texts use text organization, language s

37、tructures, vocabulary, grammar and level of formality differently. For example, in a detective story, a reader could expect the following chain of events: a crime occurs, possible suspects are identified, evidence is uncovered, and the perpetrator is apprehended. Formal schemata are described as abs

38、tract, encoded, internalized, coherent patterns of meta-linguistic, discoursal, and textual organization that guide expectation in our attempts to understand a meaningful piece of language. According to the classification of linguistics, reading materials can be divided into such groups as argumenta

39、tion, exposition, description and narration. There are actually various types in daily reading like newspaper articles, reports, poems, prose, essays, autobiographies, correspondence, etc.1.3 The Relationship Between the Reading Process and SchemaSchema theory explains how peoples existing knowledge

40、 affects comprehension. From the perspective of schema theory, reading comprehension is a function of the readers processing and activating the appropriate formal and content schemata in interaction with the text. Comprehension failures may be due partly to the readers lacking the appropriate schema

41、ta required by the text. Foreign language comprehension failures may be due to mismatches between the schemata presumed by the text and those possessed by the reader himself.Rumelhart (1980) believes that comprehension is the process of selecting the schema illustrating input information and variabl

42、e constraints. Reading comprehension is first of all inputting some amount of information and then searching for the schemata illustrating the information. Comprehension is generated when such schemata are found or some schemata are specified or slots are filled. Just as various concepts operate at

43、different levels, schemata in humans mind also have different levels, and the comprehension process is bound to reflect the levels, that is, the input information has to be processed at different levels successively from lower level schema specification to higher level one.According to schema theory

44、, not only content schema, but also linguistic schema and formal schema are necessary factors in reading. From this perspective, reading is understood to be a complex cognitive process in which reader and text interact to recreate meaningful discourse. Therefore an efficient and effective reading re

45、quires both top-down and bottom-up strategies operating interactively (Rumelhart, 1980). In this section, the relationship between the reading process and schema theory is dealt with clearly and fully.1.4 The Types of Reading ProcessReading instruction to EFL learners lies on students reading proces

46、s. 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 operation of both approaches: tha

47、t is interactive approach. At present, most teachers 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

48、textual units to larger ones and then comes to the interpretation of the whole text(Nunan, 1991:235). This model reflects traditional attitudes towards reading, the reader begins with the lowest level, features of symbols, from which the symbols are identified. In the process readers reconstruct the

49、 authors 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 app

50、roaches 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

51、 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 interact

52、ive 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 inte

53、rpretation to take place (Celce-murcia, 2000). Bottom-up processing makes the data needed to instantiate or fill out the schemata available; top-down processing facilitates data assimilation or is consistent with the readers conceptual set. Bottom-up processing ensures that the reader will be sensit

54、ive 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 data. Through the interaction between top-down and bottom-up processin

55、g, the flow of information through the system is 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

56、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, a

57、nd 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. A Practica