Abstract: English reading is an important part in English teaching. How to teach English well is the problem which obsesses the English teacher. For a long time, because of the influence of traditional teaching approaches, teaching process is becoming words, sentences and grammar-based. As a result, teachers ignore accumulating the background knowledge and analyzing the whole discourse which is closely related to given materials. The writer of this thesis is mainly to summarize the experts’ research achievements combining with some examples. This research enables students to master the information of the whole context. It is useful to accumulate the language and background knowledge which can improve the reading efficiency and language skill.

Key words: schema theory; English reading; background knowledge; discourse

摘要：英语阅读是中学英语教学中一个非常重要的部分。如何有效的教好英语阅读一直是困扰英语教师的难题。长期以来，由于受传统教学法的影响，不少教师对于阅读理解的错误认识导致他们过分注重词、句、语法的教授而忽略了对背景知识和语篇结构的讲解。笔者旨在总结前人的研究成果，并深入全面的探讨图式理论在初中英语阅读中的运用并结合实际拓展说明。这一研究有助于学生对文章信息的理解，充分掌握文章所蕴含的语言知识和背景知识，提高阅读效率和其他的语言能力。  

关键词：图式理论；英语阅读；背景知识；语篇分析