Effects Of Discourse-based English Reading Teaching Approach On Senior High School Students’ English Reading Proficiency

Reading,as an important language skill,is usually regarded as the essential component of language teaching and learning.Though much attention has been paid to English reading teaching and learning in senior high schools,the students’ reading performance is still far from perfect in China.To change the current situation,some teachers and scholars pay attention to the discourse-based English reading teaching.However,the researches on senior high school students’ English reading proficiency in terms of four question types are relatively few.Based on Input Hypothesis,Taxonomy Theory and Output Hypothesis,this current research intends to answer the following two questions:1)What effects does discourse-based English reading teaching approach have on senior high school students’ English reading proficiency on the whole?2)What effects does discourse-based English reading teaching approach have on senior high school students’ English reading proficiency in terms of identifying details,guessing word meanings,understanding main ideas and making inference?The research design was a quantitative research.100 students from two parallel classes of senior two in Shizhuang Senior High School in Jiangsu Province were selected to take part in an experiment lasting for 3 months.The instruments included a pre-test and a post-test.The pre-test was conducted to decide which class acted as EC and which one as CC.In the experiment,the discourse-based English reading teaching method was adopted in EC and the traditional English reading teaching method was employed in CC.After the experiment,students in EC and CC were required to complete a post-test.The data of the pre-test and the post-test were collected and put into database of SPSS 19.0 to synthesize and analyze.The findings of the study were summarized as follows:(1)Discourse-based English reading teaching approach could effectively improve senior high school students’ English reading proficiency in general(2)Discourse-based English reading teaching approach could effectively improve students’ reading proficiency in terms of understanding main ideas and making inference while it had no obvious function in improving students’ reading proficiency in terms of identifying details and guessing word meanings.Some pedagogical implications are advanced.First of all,discourse awareness should be raised in reading practice to make English reading teaching more effective.Secondly,both teachers and students should equip themselves with the basic knowledge of discourse.Lastly,in discourse-based English reading teaching class,teachers should include all the different question types appearing in the reading comprehension exercises when designing the activities in teaching reading materials.Some limitations and suggestions are put forward.Firstly,the future studies can invite more students to participate in the teaching experiment,which means that students from different classes,different schools or different provinces can be chosen to take part in the teaching experiment.Secondly,it needs much longer time for the students to develop their ability to read.Reading itself is a long and time-consuming task of English teaching and learning.Therefore,it is suggested that the time duration of the teaching experiment could be prolonged to at least two semesters if condition permits.Thirdly.the theory and practice of discourse-based English reading teaching was a bit ambiguous for the researcher in the reading teaching practice,so the teaching effects was not fully exerted.Future researches need to focus on how to perfect the procedure of the new approach and how to skillfully and organically integrate discourse-based English reading teaching approach and traditional reading teaching approach in order to achieve a better result.