Schema Theory and the Teaching of College English Reading.docVIP

 PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 34 Schema Theory and the Teaching of College English Reading 1. Introduction 1.1 Schema The earliest formulation of schema was put forward by Kant. In modern psychology study, Bartlett is credited with first proposing the concept of schema in Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. “To him, the term schema refers to an active organization of past reaction, or of past experiences, which must always be supposed to be operating in any well-adopted organic response. “[1] In 1970s, Rumelhart explained that the “schema is the building blocks of cognition.” [2] For example, the people don’t have the definition of computer before it is invented. But now, with the popularizing of computer, there is a definition of computer in people’s mind that is the computer schema. The schema helps the people to make up a picture of computers that have been seen and to know the different kinds of computers and the things that are similar to the computers later. That is to say, “schema is a structure of abstract knowledge; it summarizes all kinds of known cases which has different details and gives the expression to the relation or all parts.” [3] 1.2 Classifications of Schema Theory Researchers have identified several types of schemata. “Content schema, which refers to a reader’s background or world knowledge, provides readers with a foundation, a basis for comparison. Formal schema, often known as textual schema, refers to the organizational forms and rhetorical structures of written texts. It can include knowledge of different text types and genres, and also include the understanding of different types of texts which use different text organization, language structures, vocabulary, grammar, level of formality / register. Schooling and culture play the largest role in providing one with a knowledge base of formal schema. While formal schema cover discourse level items, linguistic or language sche