Content Schemata and Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension means reading and understanding, an active process which can be seen as a kind of dialogue between the reader and the text or the author. We often hear our students say that they can read the words but don’t know what the words mean. This paper focuses on schema theory with special attention to content schemata, analyses the reasons of the students’ failure in reading, points out that the presence or absence of the content schemata will affect the reader’s reading comprehension because of the characteristics of the content schemata in terms of culture and topic area, and puts forward ways to help the students construct new and appropriate content schemata.