THE IMPACT OF SCHEMA THEORY ON IMPROVING UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' WRITING PERFORMANCE

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the impact of applying schema theory in teaching and improving the English writing skills. It adopted a quasi-experimental-control group design. The sample consisted of (40) university students who studied English as a foreign language at Al-Adel University - Yemen during the academic year (2021/2022), twenty of them were assigned as the control group and the other (20) as the experimental group. A pre-test/post-test paragraph writing was used for data collection. The students' writings were gathered and corrected, and the scores were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The results showed that there were statistical significant differences between the performance of the experimental and the control groups in the post-test in favor of the experimental group. Those results mean that schema theory has its positive effects in improving students' writing performance. The study recommended that teachers of English writing should vary their ways of teaching and encourage their students to use their prior knowledge to improve their writing skills.