Abstract
What impact does background knowledge have on reading comprehension? Based on schema theory and relevance theory, this thesis is intended to investigate the effects of background knowledge on reading comprehension of Chinese English majors. The study includes 28 students, assigned into two groups: Group A (more background knowledge group) and Group B (less background knowledge group). During the 2 months of the study, the students participated in 4 reading comprehension tests. Analysis of the data collected shows that background knowledge can help students read faster and achieve better comprehension accuracy, thus confirming the importance of background knowledge in the process of reading comprehension.
Keywords   background knowledge  culture   reading comprehension

文章的背景知识对于阅读理解有何影响呢？以图式理论和关联理论为基础，本文旨在研究背景知识对于英语专业学生阅读理解的影响。本次研究包括28名学生，被分为两组，A组学生具有较丰富的英语背景知识，而B组学生了解的背景知识较少。在两个月里两组学生共进行了四次阅读测试。对数据的分析表明阅读背景知识能够提高学生的阅读速度和理解的准确性，从而证实了背景知识对于阅读理解的重要性。
关键词   背景知识   文化   阅读理解

Some teachers of reading comprehension have found that many students have difficulties in understanding the meanings of words and sentence structures in a text and therefore have problems in understanding the text. Then what has affected their reading ability? Recently, research on reading comprehension has shown that the ability to understand a text is mainly decided, to a large degree, by the reader’s background knowledge: the ability to understand other cultures. When we read some texts in another language, we have to know much about the background at least or we can not go into the writer’s view and thought.
Reading is regarded as the one of the basic skills in English learning, which is very important to both teachers and students in the teaching and learning of languages. Effective reading is a great way to enhance students’ English proficiency, especially the development of the student’s reading comprehension ability. Many language experts in western countries have given more care to the importance of good reading in foreign and second languages. In our country, English reading plays big part in language exams and school learning. So, in order to train better students in English learning, we have to pay more attention to the learning background of a second language.