For many junior middle school students, some factors may pose an important effect on their English reading, such as, poor English vocabulary, different learning styles, low level of reading proficiency, weak culture adaptation, immature reading habits and so on. All these factors can make reading comprehension turn to be a difficult part in junior middle school students’ English study. Then, how to effectively guide the reading teaching becomes an important research for many reading specialists, linguists and foreign language teaching professors. Schema theory, originated in the field of psychology has been applied to EFL learning and has a great effect on reading comprehension. According to schema theory, both the reader and the reader’s prior knowledge are important in comprehension. In other words, comprehension involves the coordinated activity of schemata at all levels. Comprehension may fail because readers do not have appropriate schemata, or readers may fail to activate schemata, or applied schemata are different from those intended by the author. Initially, the instruction of English reading in China adopts the traditional method, which is called teacher-centered, grammar and word-based approach. Such model of teaching English reading has many defects: Students can't understand the text as a whole, they would like to read the passage word by word, pay little attention to the whole structure of the text, let alone the application of the language, and they only pay attention to the study of words and phrases but not to the meaning and function of the text. Through a long time study, junior middle school students’ appreciation ability of English reading is killed by this method. Many teachers from junior middle schools have realized that the conventional English reading teaching method has some deficiencies. Therefore, they try to change it, and want to look for a better way to replace it.源/自:751:;论-文'网www.751com.cn

As a result, this thesis is designed for obtaining a better understanding of the schema theory and finding the possibility of using it to improve English reading in junior middle school. Due to the lack of abundant schemata or the low ability to use appropriate schemata, many Chinese EFL students have poor skills of English reading comprehension. However, various teaching methods and classroom activities can be used to help students build or activate schemata. This paper makes an introduction about some methods that are derived from schema theory, which may help to make English reading teaching more effective and interesting.

From the perspective of English reading teaching in junior middle school, this thesis carries out a preliminary discussion from four parts: part one explains the nature of reading comprehension and points out some factors that influence junior middle school students’ English reading. Part two analyzes the positive functions in the application of schema theory to the teaching of English reading. Part three focuses on how to implement reading teaching based on schema theory. And part four makes a conclusion.