A Research On The Effect Of Discourse Teaching On Senior Middle Students’ Problem-Solving Ability In Gap-Filling

As a result of the reform of National College Entrance Examination in 2015,gap-filling has been added as a new type of question,which requires candidates to choose the best option from the seven given and focuses on testing candidates’ logical thinking ability.It fully reflects the proposition characteristic of NCEE-emphasizing discourse,emphasizing application,and emphasizing communication,which means candidates are required that they should grasp the overall content and contextual logical meaning of the article from the discourse level and that candidates are tested for their ability to analyze the discourse.Thus,some discourse knowledge and discourse analysis ability are necessary and essential for senior high school students if they want to handle this question well.However,in the past,English teaching focused too much on vocabulary and grammar,while neglected text analysis.Even in reading class,text did not get enough attention.The results of linguistics research at home and abroad show that a new subject as it is,discourse analysis plays an important part in guiding and enlightening foreign language teaching,especially for reading comprehension teaching.From the macro point of view,discourse analysis mainly involves genre analysis theory,and from the micro point of view,the most important theory is cohesion and coherence theory,which is particularly important for the improvement of learners’ reading ability.Therefore,this paper takes gap-filling of NCEE as the starting point and observation point,conducts experiments and researches on the guiding role of relevant theories in daily reading teaching in senior high school,and explores the effect on applying discourse teaching based on discourse analysis to reading teaching.In detail,this paper mainly explores two questions:(1)How well does discourse teaching work in senior middle students’ problem-solving ability in gap-filling? And in what aspects?(2)What are the differences in the effect of discourse teaching on problem-solving ability in gap-filling among excellent students,middle students and students with English-learning difficulties?With the purpose of figuring out these above problems,this study based on the theory of discourse analysis conducted practical research on two grade two classes of a senior high school in Guangxi.The two classes had the same level of English before the experiment.One class was the experimental class,which adopted the reading teaching mode of discourse teaching while the other was the control class,which adopted the traditional teaching mode,and other conditions remained the same.To be specific,by sorting out and analyzing the gap-fillings which are from NCEE from 2019 to 2021,and summarizing the characteristics of their propositions,the author applied the method and mode of discourse analysis to the experimental class’ s daily reading teaching flexibly based on the actual teaching situation.In addition,the author consciously infiltrated the relevant knowledge of discourse into teaching activities,so as to train students to form discourse awareness and grasp the structural characteristics of discourse.The study,which lasted 4 months,was a combination of gap-filling test,questionnaire survey and interview.The results reveal that compared with the control class,the experimental class has significant improvement in the score of gap-filling after applying discourse teaching.Specifically,they develop a certain textual awareness and have a deeper understanding of the article genre,text structure and the logical relationship between sentences,and are more proficient in the skills of gap-filling.In addition,the application of discourse teaching has a more obvious effect on improving excellent students and middle students’ problem-solving ability in gap-filling,while has a limited effect on students with learning difficulties.The author concludes from the results that,teachers are supposed to pay attention to the analysis of the structure of discourse,highlight the methods of cohesion and coherence,apply different teaching methods to different levels students,and construct cultural background to students in daily reading teaching.