Abstract

As an important input means of language acquisition, reading plays a vital part in facilitating the development of students’ comprehensive language communicative competence. Schema theory claims that background knowledge plays a positive role in improving students’ language acquisition, which is in accordance with the goal of pre-reading activities in reading classes. In other words, a perfect design of the pre-reading activities can help activate students’ relevant background schemata. Besides, it can enable students to get a deeper understanding of the reading materials. Furthermore, students are able to construct personalized language information efficiently. 

The focus of this thesis is to study the types, design and effectiveness of pre-reading activities under the guidance of schema theory in junior high schools reading teaching and to analyze its influence on later reading teaching, therefore to generate suggestions for teachers in junior high schools to teach reading theoretically and practically. 

The thesis first builds the research framework, utilizing schema theory to analyze teaching activities through literature review. Later, through videos analysis on pre-reading activities, this thesis proves the positive influence of schema theory on activating and creating related background knowledge in junior high schools English reading teaching. Finally, the thesis gives some suggestions with regard to better pre-reading activities design. And, the thesis believes that teachers should adopt a variety of student-centered reading teaching methods as well as make full use of content schemata and formal schemata to improve the efficiency of reading.

Key words: reading teaching; schema theory; pre-reading activities

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction-1

1.1 Background of the study-1

1.2 Purpose and significance of the research-2

1.3 Overall structure of the thesis-2

2 Literature review-3

2.1 Reading comprehension-3

2.1.1 Definition of reading-3

2.1.2 Three models for teaching reading-4

2.2 Schema theory-5

2.2.1 Definition of schema -5

2.2.2 Classification of schema -6

2.3 Previous studies on pre-reading activities at home and abroad- 7

3 Research methodology-8

3.1 Research questions-9

3.2 Research subjects-9

3.3 Data collection and research procedures-10

4 Results and discussion-10

4.1 Analysis of the types of pre-reading activities-10

4.2 Analysis of the effectiveness of pre-reading activities-13

4.3 Features of satisfactory pre-reading activities -15

4.3.1 Considering the reader differences-15

4.3.2 Enriching the forms of pre-reading activities-16

4.3.3 Encouraging narrow reading-16

5 Conclusion-17

5.1 Major findings and suggestions-17

5.2 Limitations of the study-18

5.3 Suggestions for future study-18

References-20

Appendix-22