A Research On The Application Of Discourse Analysis Theory To English Reading Teaching In Junior Middle School

English reading is the core of English teaching in junior middle schools,which is an effective way to improve students’ language comprehension abilities.The traditional English reading teaching pays too much attention to the explanation of words,sentences and grammar items.It is not conducive to the development of students’ comprehensive use of language,because it neglects the analysis of the overall structure of the reading materials.English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education(ministry of education,2011 emphasizes the investigation of students’ discourse ability.The discourse-based teaching can meet this requirement.The discourse analysis theory believes that the discourse is the basic unit of the language.The macro-structure,micro-structure of discourse analysis are the main theories of discourse analysis.On the basis of these two theories,this research adopts the discourse analysis in English reading teaching,which can guide students to understand the English reading materials effectively,raise students’ awareness of obtaining information and improve their comprehensive ability of using language.There are many researches on applying the discourse analysis theory to English reading teaching at home and abroad,but most of them take colleges students as the research subjects while there are few researches on the middle school students.Based on the theory of discourse analysis,this research analyzes effects of discourse analysis in English reading in junior middle school students.Two questions intend to be answered:(1)What effect does discourse-based reading teaching have on students’ reading skills?(2)Can the discourse-based reading teaching improve students’ reading performance in junior middle school ?In this research,Class Three(control class)and Class Four(experimental class)of Grade Nine in Shanxi Lvliang Yunhua Bilingual School are taken as the research subjects.It took four months to conduct this experiment and the questionnaire and reading tests are used as the instruments in this research.The research includes four stages: pre-investigation,application of the discourse analysis theory,post-investigation and data collection and analysis.In the application stage,students in the EC are taught based on the theory of the discourse English reading while students in the CC are taught in the traditional English reading.The conclusion of this research is as follows: The discourse analysis theory has positive effects on students’ English reading skills.Students can use the discourse-based skills when they read the materials.Compared with the students in CC,students’ scores in EC improved after the experiment.It proves that the discourse analysis theory can improve students’ reading performance.The major findings of this research can also provide some suggestions for the further research.But there are some limitation: It took four months to conduct this research,which is a little shorter;The research method is simpler.Those limitations will be avoided in future research to ensure the accuracy of the research.