The Instructional Design of English Major's Reading Class Based on Schema-theoretic Approach

Schema theory is an important concept in ESL teaching,which describes the process in which readers combine their own background knowledge with the information in a text for comprehension.This paper summarizes some of the researches into schema theory and its applications to ESL reading.Some pre-reading tasks need to be designed to build or activate the English major's schemata.The goals of building corresponding schema in the reading class are highlighted,such as language schema,culture-specific schema and form schema.The author also proposes the use of the schema-theoretic approach in the reading class and points out the importance of both developing learner's vocabulary and expanding knowledge by extensive reading in building students' reading schema.