A Study Of Improving Senior High School Students’ English Reading Comprehension Ability Based On The Instruction Of Discourse Cohesive Devices

For Chinese high school students,English learning is a foreign language learning activity.This means that their linguistic learning environment is poor and reading is the main channel for their target language input.In the NMET,the section of reading comprehension accounts for the highest proportion,and all the other testing sections are also related to reading to some extent.The most important factors that affect students’ reading comprehension are not only the vocabulary but also the overall grasp of the text.Recent studies have shown that the way of discourse analysis in English reading instruction based on cohesive devices contributes to the improvement of high school students’ reading ability.For this reason,the author has attempted an experiment of English reading teaching with the highlighting of discourse cohesion devices for senior high school students.After the 4-month experiment,the method used in English reading instruction is conducive to the improvement of the students’ discourse awareness and reading comprehension ability.The basic procedures of this study are: teaching experiment design,pretest,4-month teaching,posttest and statistical analysis.The steps of the teaching experiment includes: introduction,analysis,summary and application.As the hypothesis of this study is that English reading instruction with the highlighting of discourse cohesion devices can improve the senior high school students’ discourse awareness and reading comprehension ability,3 research questions below are explored: 1.What is the situation of senior high school students’ consciousness of cohesive devices and discourse awareness? 2.Can the method of English reading instruction with the highlighting of discourse cohesion devices raise the senior high school students’ discourse awareness and discourse analysis ability? 3.Can the method of English reading instruction with the highlighting of discourse cohesion devices improve the senior high school students’ reading comprehension ability?The experiment teaching is the main research method employed in the study,so the research instruments of questionnaire and tests are used in the procedures of the study.The subjects of the teaching experiment are 103 students from the middleschool where the author works.The subjects are divided into control group and experimental group.Traditional reading teaching method focusing on vocabulary and grammar explanation and translation was adopted in the control class while reading teaching method from the perspective of discourse cohesion devices was used in the experimental class.The results of the teaching experimental show that the new teaching method from the perspective of discourse cohesion devices significantly enhanced the discourse analysis and discourse cohesion consciousness(Sig=0.000),and lifted the EC students’ reading skills from 22.to 25.(Sig=0.003)(the total score of reading is40).This shows that the new teaching method is obviously superior to the traditional teaching method.This research provides some enlightenments for English reading instruction in senior high school.First of all,a reasonable and continuous discourse analysis in English reading instruction from the perspective of cohesive devices can effectively improve students’ discourse awareness,and especially their reading comprehension ability.Secondly,English reading instruction with discourse cohesive devices highlighting in the texts can train students memorize English words in concrete context.Thirdly,the selection of text materials,the amount and content of text analysis,and the gradual progress of discourse analysis are all crucial to the successful implementation of this approach to English reading instruction with the highlighting of cohesive devices in discourse analysis.