The Applications of Content Schema in English ReadingTeaching

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摘要：Content schema plays significant role in English reading comprehension. This essay aims to expatiate on some classroom activities to provide students with ways to activate their prior content schema and construct their new content schema to facilitate reading comprehension.

關鍵詞：Content Schema Application Reading Comprehension

I Content schema in reading comprehension

Content schema refers to the background knowledge of the content area of a text，or the topic a text talks about（CarrellEisterhold 1988）.Content schema deals with cultural knowledge，topic familiarity，and previous experience with a certain field，such as a text about eating in restaurant，the ways of celebrating Christmas day in the Christian countries and Spring Festival in China，or about the history of Britain，the custom of Arab，the problem caused by Aids infection，and so on. Content schema helps the reader to comprehend the text information greatly and directly by assimilating text information， making judgment，deduction and choice，activating and establishing background knowledge，allowing orderly searches of memory and making up for language deficiency.

II The Applications of Content Schema in English Reading Teaching

Content schema plays enormous role in reading comprehension. Adequate and appropriate content schema is crucial to achieve reading comprehension.That’s to say，the more knowledge or content schema the reader has in mind，the more effective reading he has. Therefore，the teachers should provide as much content schema as possible.

1.Activating the known content schema

Reading problems are not just caused by schema deficiencies，but also the“relevant schema must be activated”（Carrell，1988）.The previous research on content schema theory has found that students comprehend the reading materials by relevant prior content knowledge to interact with the text.Therefore，just having prior content knowledge is not sufficient，only when the prior content knowledge is activated can the students understand the text.So in order to improve the students’reading comprehension， teachers should guide and train students to master the strategies of activating schema.Schema activation is a general term referring to various activities designed to activate relevant knowledge in students’prior memory to encountering new，to-be-learned information （Alvermann，Smith and Readence，1985）.Teachers can use the following teaching methods to activate students’content schema： brainstorming， class discussion，pre-questions，previewing，semantic mapping，using multi-media and Internet. Take brainstorming as example，brainstorming is the name given to a situation when a group of people meet to generate new ideas around a specific area of interest. Using rules which remove inhibitions，people are able to think more freely and move into new areas of thought and so create numerous new ideas and solutions.The participants shout out ideas as they occur to them and then build on the ideas raised by others.A keyword，a painting，these can be used to stimulate students to discuss，or at least we can say that will stimulate students to speak or think.Teachers can adopt a“brainstorming”format to enable students to say whatever he had in mind，and then the information can be recorded on the blackboard. For example，in teaching An Integrated Skills Course Book1，text A，unit 6，（Shanghai Foreign Language Press）， Looking for a part-time job.Since the key word of Text A is part-time job， the students are asked to name some common part-time jobs，they provide the following words（baby-sitter，tutor，salesclerk，waiter，waitress，usher，newsboy，newsgirl）.Then，the students arranged in groups are required to list the advantages and disadvantages of each part-time job in above table.By doing this，students continue to activate the related content schema.

2.Constructing new content schema

The students’reading problems may be caused by the problems of insufficient background knowledge；readers who do not have a sufficient quantity of background knowledge on the topic of a text will keep them from understanding the text accurately.Constructing background knowledge for reading comprehension helps students gain more knowledge that they need to be successful readers.The more background knowledge reader gains，the more new schema establishes in his brain. Therefore，it is necessary for teachers to instruct students in building relevant background knowledge.With the help of background knowledge are provided by teacher，students can assimilate，classify and reserve many features of the coming text，and achieve correct comprehension.The teacher can adopt the following approaches to build new schema for students：increasing background knowledge，basing on known knowledge，increasing real-life experience，encouraging extensive reading，accumulating and enriching cultural schema.It is very useful to increase the amount of background information by providing more in-depth information which relevant to the subject of coming text.This will help the students understand the text at higher level.For example，in studying the text，The Truth about Fitness Myths，students investigate the topic--how to keep fit in depth by reading some articles from books or newspaper，they sum up the knowledge about the ways of keeping fit as following：For or one thing，you should keep a physical exercise.You have to do some exercises in your spare time，for example，swim，tennis ball，dance.Sports are an indispensable part in our life and you should continually exercise to keep fit.Following，you should choose nutritious foods as your three meal in one day，eating fish，vegetables，lean meat that contain less fat，and give up some like fry，high-fat foods，as they will bring illness to you if you eat them long-term. Finally，in order to keep fit，you also have to pay attention to you habits.Giving up bad habits，for example smoking，drinking. After providing more in-depth information about the subject，students are able to increase and build their background knowledge of how to keep fit.

3.Consolidating content schema

Content schema has the function of consolidating memory.It could provide the outline of related notion in a person’s memory and it is a kind of structure，which does help the readers remind the information in the text and allow the readers to construct the unknown elements and reconstruct the forgotten parts. Content schema also provide the students with opportunities to relate what they have read to what they’ve already known and get the students to produce language based on what they have learnt.Meanwhile，it makes the students go into deeper level comprehension and develop integrative skills，which are listening，speaking，reading and writing.What's more，the students will increase cultural awareness and receive ethical education.Generally speaking，the activities of consolidating content schema can be conducted in the following ways：questioning，discussion，summary writing，retell，role-play，debate

Writing an English summary of the key points of the text after reading makes the readers consolidate memory and makes what they have learn into long-time memory.That is an efficient way to integrate the prior knowledge and new schema，and the effective way to learn new knowledge in terms of old knowledge. Also，it is the best way of combining reading with writing.Summary writing will reinforce the comprehension of content because the summary can be written only after reading through the text and having a thorough understanding of it.

III Summary

To sum up，the essay gives some suggestions on how to activate students’known content schema，construct new content schema and consolidate content schema，so as to bridge the gap between new schema and existing schema.So in order to facilitate reading comprehension，the teachers should provide as much content schema as possible to help students familiarize themselves with appropriate schema in reading comprehension.

參考文獻：

[1]Anderson RC，Pearson PD.A Schema-Theoretical View of Basic Process Reading Comprehension[A].Pearson PD.Handbook of Reading Research.New York London Longman，1984.

[2]Carrell，P.L.Metacognitive Awareness and Second Language Reading[J].The Modern Language Journal，1989.