The Role Of Relevance Theory In Enhancing College Students’ English Reading Ability

At present, the college English education in our country, especially the English readingcomprehension education, is still the traditional education model that mainly based on the memory ofthe English words and the application of the English grammar. It can not deny that the traditionaleducation model has its own rationality. And under this kind of education model, there are greatnumber of English talents were cultivated to the society. However, with the rapid economicdevelopment, society’s requirements for the English reading ability have been gradually improved.The traditional English education model is limited by its own limitations, which can not meet therequirements. So how to further improve college students’English reading ability, which requires abreakthrough and innovation in the traditional English education.Relevance Theory is the main theory that the article studied on. In this paper, according to thetraditional English education model, through the depth analysis of the Relevance Theory, the authorstudied how to use the characteristics of the relevance and optimal relevance to improve the level ofthe traditional English education. On the basis of the traditional education model, a new collegeEnglish reading comprehension teaching model was proposed to improve the traditional educationmodel, which continuously combining with the Relevance Theory in the teaching process.Through a detailed introduction of the Relevance Theory and the traditional education, the authorapplied the Relevance Theory to the practical English reading comprehension teaching, which finallycombing with the present situation of the college English reading comprehension. According to thequalitative and quantitative empirical research on some certain college students, the author obtainedthe experimental results: comparing with the traditional education, students’English reading ability onthe Relevance Theoretic-reading model has been greatly improved. Practice confirms that thefeasibilities of the Relevance Theory in enhancing college students’English reading ability.