The Effects of Content Schema and Language Proficiency on English Reading Comprehension——An Experimental Study Based on Schema Theory

This paper reports on an experiment study carried out to explore the interaction effects of content schema and language proficiency on EFL reading comprehension of Chinese college students.The results reveal that both topic familiarity and language proficiency have significant effects on reading performance,and there are interaction effects between the two factors.The study suggests that different teaching empha-ses should be given to the students with different proficiency levels so as to make teaching more effective and efficient.It is best to suit the remedy to the case and consider the individual differences among the students.