Chapter One Introduction
1.1Purposes of the Study
In the history of English teaching and learning, Grammar-Translation approachhas dominated traditional teaching of reading. This method views the EFL readingprocess as a passive decoding one in which each word，phrase and sentence structureis seen as discrete language point and assembled together by the teacher while thegeneral idea of the text and reading skills are neglected. It focuses on grammarteaching by means of translation from Chinese into English and vice versa. That iswhy in traditional college English classes, English teachers prefer to pay moreattention to the teaching of vocabulary and sentence structure. They usually explainlanguage points word by word and sentence by sentence in the texts with a result thatstudents can merely passively understand the superficial meaning of the text letalone the thorough understanding of the implied meaning. In this situation, studentswho make great efforts to deal with these language points and do lots of readingexercises stiil can't acquire satisfying reading results. They usually fail to get thetheme and main idea even though they know each language point of the text well.And even if students have the understanding of what is written in the text finally,they spent much more time than expected because of the absence of requiredbackground knowledge. At the same time, since this class pattern is teacher-centeredand students are passive receivers，they feel the English classes are quite boring.Consequently, how to actively teach reading in college to improve students'English reading ability has long been the focus of English reading teachers in China.With the development of the theories of second language acquisition, a large numberof researches have been probed into reading's nature and characteristics so as to find some solutions. Currently, one of the prevailing perspectives toward the analysis ofreading process is the schema theory.
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1.2The Organization of the Dissertation
This thesis falls into five parts. The first chapter of this paper provides ageneral introduction of the whole paper: the definition of schema theory, the purposeand the structure of the dissertation. The second chapter reviews the historical andexisting views on reading. The nature and the definition of reading are also described.The third chapter analyses schema theory and its relationship with reading, as well asthe models and classiiication. The fourth chapter explains the applications of schematheory on novel reading and also offers an example under the guidance of schematheory. The fifth chapter offers the suggestions of schema on reading stories. In thelast chapter, it's concluded that the author has found that the schema-theory-basedreading teaching has better and efficient effect. Meanwhile, the significance ofemploying some meta-cognitive strategies is also emphasized because it is quitecrucial in enriching the schematic view of reading instruction and turning a diligentreader to a strategic and proficient reader. In a word, when reading a stoiy, especiallyfiction, a reader, if his reading process is schema-based，he will have a betterunderstanding and instructive appreciation of the fiction.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Schema and Schema Theory
Schema theory dated back to the Gestalt psychology of the 1920s and 1930s. Itsmain idea is that a new experience is obtained, in memory, by comparing with astereotypical version of a similar experience. The representative man is Germanpsychologist Immanuel Kant, who once said that concepts indeed are impossible，and can have little meaning at all, if no object is offered for them, or “at least for theelements of which they are composed，，. The psychologist believes that only if newideas, fresh concepts and latest information are connected to what the readers alreadyhave known, can the words have their meanings. Bartlett (1932) first developed theschema theory through following the works of Henry Head the neurologist. Bartletthad applied this theory to story recollection, who observed that after being told of anAmerican Indian story, British people had adapted a lot of details to fit in theirmental frame, adding familiar details and at the same time leaving out the unfamiliarones. He used the term “schema” in the sense that it is still used today.
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2.2 Understanding Reading
The traditional view of the readers is an "empty" vessel to be filled withknowledge from external sources. Before 1960s, it was generally believed that areader was quite passive in acquiring the meaning of the writer. The reader processed information in a bottom-up way, which meant that he started from the bottom levelof information to the top level. First he recognized letters followed by wordrecognition. Then he grasped the meaning of phrases. Based on understanding ofphrases, he obtained the meaning of sentences. At last he understood the whole text. This idea was great challenged in 1970s, when Wolfgang Iser wrote in his The Act ofMeaning, “If readers were really to scan letters and words like a computer，thereading process would simply entail registering these units which, however, are notyet units of meaning. Meaning is part of the deep structure, the semantic, cognitivelevel. And readers may recall that between the surface level and the deep level oflanguage there in no one-to-one correspondence. Meaning may always resist merewords" (Iser 1978). These words disclose the drawbacks of the bottom-up view ofreading, which is helpless in digging out the intended meaning of the writer.
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Chapter Three Schema and Short Novel Reading.........17
3.1 Three Processes in Reading.........17
3.1.1Bottom-up Processing.........17
3.1.2Top-down Processing.........18
3.1.3Interactive-compensatory Processing.........19
3.2Schema Types in Reading a Novel.........20
3.2.1Language Schemata.........20
3.2.2Formal Schemata.........20
3.2.3Content Schemata.........21
3.3Strategies for Reading Novels.........22
Chapter Four Application of Schema Theory .........25
4.1Schema in Pre-reading Activities.........25
4.2Schema in Vocabulary Instruction.........26
4.3Schema in Comprehension Instruction.........28
4.4Schema in Material Selection.........28
4.5Application of Schema Theory in Reading a Novel.........29
4.6 Appreciation of the Novel Based on Schema.........37
4.6.1Appreciation of the Novel.........37
4.6.2Analysis of the Novel Based on Schema.........39
Chapter Five Suggestions for Future Research of Schema.........43
Chapter Five Suggestions for Future Research of Schema Theory in Short Novel Reading
5.1 Enhancing Schemata by Building up Linguistic Potential
It is known that vocabulary is a key element in reading development. For mosteducated people，this is a lifetime project to broaden their vocabulary. In order toachieve a better result in both teaching and learning vocabulary, we need to have ageneral understanding about how to build a better vocabulary. Many students are surprised when they are told they have small vocabularies.“But I read all the time!" they protest. This shows that reading alone may not beenough to make us leam new words. Instead of avoiding these new words, we needto take 狂 closer look at them. First, try to guess at a word’s meaning from itscontext-that is, the sense of the passage in which it appears; second, if we have adictionary on hand，look up the word's meaning immediately. This slows down ourreading somewhat, but our improved understanding of each new word willeventually speed our learning of other words, making reading easier. Make a dailypractice of noting words of interest to us for further study whenever we are reading,listening to the radio, talking to friends，or watching television.
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Conclusion
This research is an English-short-novels-reading exploration under the schematheory by taking the aspect of English novel appreciation and analysis. This thesisprobes into the study of the application of schema theory in English short novelreading to English majors with an aim to find out some new implications of schematheory to improve students' reading ability. At the beginning of this thesis, the authorthoroughly gives a literature review on related theories: schema theory and readingelements. According to schema theory, background knowledge is of great help forinformation processing. So it is necessary to activate or build readers' priorknowledge in EFL reading class facilitating their reading comprehension. Englishteachers should guide students' reading by the introduction of the related schematathrough all kinds of schema based pre-reading activities in order to help themachieve an efficient reading comprehension.
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Reference (omitted)