The Effect Of Conjunction-oriented Teaching On The Reading Proficiency Of Vocational College Students

In English learning, the role of reading in the improvement of comprehensive linguistic capability has always been agreed on by English teachers and learners. Reading is a major resource of language input and accumulation and also a very important arena to develop and improve the students'capability in listening, speaking, writing and translation. Therefore, the teaching of reading is always a very important part in English teaching and plays a very significant role in English classroom teaching. However, many students in vocational colleges have a weak proficiency in English reading, which also has influence on the improvement of their comprehensive and practical ability in language learning. The reasons for the poor reading proficiency of vocational college students'are as follows. Firstly, there exists a serious phenomenon of the lack of interest and confidence in English learning and English class among the students in vocational colleges. Secondly, teaching of reading in vocational colleges usually follows the traditional grammar-translation method, and the focus of textual study is put on the two elementary layers of vocabulary and syntax, which is featured by analyzing new words, sentences and sentence patterns separately. The teaching pattern is that the teachers in class analyze the language points, explain some long and complex sentences, and put forward questions and then finish the exercises. Through the traditional teaching method, the students learn some vocabulary and grammar, but at the same time, they identify textual study with translation of the text, which also leads to the result that they neglect the ability to read between the lines, and understand the text theme and the intention of the writer. This undermines their comprehensive understanding of the whole text and thus results in the poor reading proficiency of the vocational college students and inability to use English language comprehensively.One of the major aims of vocational English education is to train the students to possess high reading proficiency and their comprehensive ability to use English language. However, under the traditional teaching method of English reading, it is quite difficult for the educational aims of the vocational colleges to be realized. Therefore, vocational English teaching should surpass the traditional reading pedagogical method and build a new teaching method for the students to construct their understanding ability.In order to tackle the above mentioned problems, the author of this thesis intended to introduce the Conjunction-oriented Teaching method into the classroom reading teaching. This thesis targeted on vocational students with comparatively weak English competence. Taking the vocational college students'English learning characteristics into consideration, this thesis would make use of the conjunction theory to study if the application of conjunction cohesion theory in reading teaching would have a positive role in the construction of the students'textual understanding ability and hence enhance their reading proficiency.In the thesis, the following research questions were posed:1. What are the problems vocational college students are confronted with in English reading? Is there a necessity of introducing Conjunction-oriented Teaching method to vocational college English reading teaching?2. Which approach will effectively improve students'English reading proficiency, conjunction-oriented teaching approach or the traditional reading teaching method in vocational colleges?To address these research questions, the author conducts the experiment in the following steps.Firstly, the author chose30 students in Class One who constituted the control class and 30 students in Class Two who comprised the experimental class. The students in the experimental class and control class should do the questionnaire at the beginning and the end of the experiment to answer some questions about the knowledge of conjunction and the present state of the reading teaching in the college where the author teaches.Secondly, in the English reading class, the conjunction-oriented teaching approach was adopted for the students in the experimental class, while the students in the control class were taught by using the traditional teaching method. Thirdly, the students in the experimental class and the control class took the pre-test at the beginning of the experiment and the post-test at the end of the experiment. The scores of the students under conjunction-oriented teaching method were compared with those of the students under traditional teaching method, through which it can be analyzed whether the students'reading proficiency was enhanced by the manipulation of the text conjunctions methods.Fourthly, the students from the two classes were given an interview, after the experiment, about the effect of the conjunction-oriented teaching approach in the reading teaching as well as a questionnaire again.In order to analyze the data derived from the experiment, SPSS 13.0.was used.It was found out that the students in the experimental class did perform better than the students in the control class, as far as their reading proficiency was concerned. Conjunction cohesion helped students to understand the passage as a whole, so that they could learn to understand the correlative relation within a text, guess the meaning of the following parts and grasp the author's idea; and it also helped the students to improve their confidence in improving their English study. Conjunction-oriented teaching approach did effectively improve students'English reading proficiency.It can be concluded that conjunction-oriented teaching approach is a feasible and effective teaching mode in English reading teaching in vocational colleges. This research provides some pedagogical implications to English teachers in vocational colleges. However, some imperfection and limitations of the conjunction-oriented teaching approach were also found in the experiment. It remains to be improved by other vocational college English teachers, who are interested in enhancing students'comprehensive ability to use English language.