The Application Of Discourse Analysis In Higher-vocational College English Reading Teaching

In Higher-vocational Technical College (HVTC) English class, the teaching of reading is considered to be the most important element, because reading is the most efficient means of gaining information and linguistic input through which students can improve their linguistic competence and cultivate their communicative competence. New reading goal is proposed in Requirements for HVTE English Courses Teaching, whereas, the present teaching situation and effect are far from satisfactory in Higher-vocational Technical Colleges. In the colleges, the traditional teacher-centered method which is employed by most teachers focuses on words, sentences and grammars, neglecting the role of discourse analysis. This way of reading teaching makes students lack the comprehensive ability to interpret the discourse and their reading competence can't be virtually improved.This thesis focuses on the application of discourse analysis based on the perspective of cognitive psychology into the reading process, and aims at introducing the discourse analysis-based approach into reading teaching-----teaching English reading with discourse analysis theory. Success in EFL reading course requires both teachers and students to have a clear idea about the nature of reading. In this thesis, the nature of reading is elaborated from cognitive psychology. As is known, cognitive psychology which advocates researches in the structure and the process of psychological activities emphasizes the interaction between individual and his environments. It holds that the process of efficient reading involves the interaction between writers and readers and this interaction is realized through the discourse. Therefore, to study discourse analysis is of particular importance in promoting EFL learners' reading ability and efficiency. On the basis of cognitive psychology, the basic discourse analysis theory is introduced in the thesis. Discourse analysis theory stresses that passages should be analyzed at discourse level instead of being analyzed through the isolated words and sentences. In discourse analysis theory, discourse is active and dynamic rather than passive and static, reading is a complex process rather than a simple decoding process. Effective reading is a two-way interaction between the discourse and the reader. It is also stressed that in the teaching process, the students are the center who are not only imparted the basic knowledge, but also trained to employ reading strategies and develop reading competence. In this way, the students can better analyze the passage as a whole and understand the writer's intention as well as the structure and intension of the passage, thus improving their comprehensive reading ability.In addition to its great theoretical value in linguistic study, discourse analysis also has its application value in the teaching of English. However, it still needs testing if the discourse analysis-based method is feasible in Higher-vocational Technical College reading teaching and to what extent it can facilitate reading teaching. Therefore, the author tries to apply discourse analysis theory into HVTC English reading teaching and prove the effectiveness of the teaching model. This study is conducted by adopting the quantitative empirical method. The subjects are students from Hebei Engineering and Technical College who are divided into two groups. The Experiment Group is trained by discourse analysis-based teaching method and the Control Group by the traditional method. Questionnaires are conducted both before and after the experiment, which concern whether the teachers employ discourse analysis in reading teaching and whether the students use the knowledge of discourse analysis. All the subjects take part in the PRETCO reading test twice, namely the pretest and the posttest. SPSS is used to analyze the related data after the experiment.The following conclusions are drawn through the analysis of application of discourse analysis into reading and the analysis of related data from the experiment:(1) It is feasible to employ discourse analysis-based teaching method in HVTC English reading teaching.(2) Discourse analysis can improve the students'reading strategies and comprehensive reading ability.(3) The new model is beneficial to arouse the students'interest and make them become active.(4) The new model trains the students'ability of autonomous learning, thus making the students obtain the goal of studying language independently.In the end, the author suggests that HVTC teachers should pay much attention to discourse analysis-based approach in their reading classes in order to cultivate the comprehensive reading ability of the students. The author also points out the limitation of this study and hope for further studies by the researchers in the future.