Genre-based Teaching Approach And Its Application In College-English Reading Instruction

In the study of English, reading has often been at the center of debate among teachers and scholars. Theories about reading and numerous teaching approaches have created an awareness of the influence reading has on listening, speaking and writing, so reading is the most important skill students should own. The present thesis intends to present a fresh way for teaching reading comprehension. Genre-based teaching approach is the pedagogy based on genre theory. It is the empirical application of the study of genre, which is popular in North America and Australia. It provokes a new way to teach English reading and it aims to improve students reading ability and communicative competence by providing them with a repertoire of genre knowledge and helping them have the awareness of generic conventions under certain social and cultural contexts.With the development of genre and genre-analysis theory, we have begun to realize that genre-based teaching approach is effective in improving students' reading comprehension. We know genre-based teaching approach has been widely used in ESP and EAP area, while there isn't enough research on its application to the teaching of College English. Although some teachers employed it in non-English major students, most of them applied it in the field of writing. Genre-based teaching approach in reading instruction has nearly remained a blank. This thesis has the intent to propose that genre-based approach can be applied in the teaching of EFL reading in order to enhance students' knowledge about language structure and function, and more importantly to enforce their communicative competence in future reading.To achieve this purpose, first, different models of reading instruction are introduced, such as bottom-up model, top-down model, interactive model and schema theory. Then different ways of analysis for text are discussed, which areregister analysis, grammatical-rhetorical analysis and interactional analysis. At last the author puts forward that genre analysis is the best way to analyze a text theoretically compared with other ways.It is hypothesized that 1. Genre-based teaching approach will improve students' reading ability. 2. Genre-based teaching approach will result in significant improvement in achieving communicative goals. 3. Genre-based approach also suits under-intermediate-level students.To test these hypotheses, experiments were carried out among 90 students of second-year in Anhui Agricultural University for two months. Quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted in the experiment. The materials used included two reading comprehension tests, a questionnaire and a presentation, among which experimental class and control class both took the two tests, and gave the presentation, and only experimental class did the questionnaire.From the experiment, two of the hypotheses were confirmed. The mean scores that experimental class got in second test were higher than those got in control class, which confirmed the first hypothesis. However, it is found that the degrees of the improvement of the subjects in experimental class are different. The higher language level they were at, the greater improvement they would get, and vice versa. This result denied the third hypothesis. Thus genre-based teaching approach can hardly provide a tangible result to under-intermediate-level students. In other words, this approach is suitable to intermediate and advanced level students. If we want to get a positive result, it is suggested that students should be taught by different levels. From the presentation, our second hypothesis was also confirmed. It can improve students' communicative competence.One important findings which was not expected before experiment was got. After the two-month implementation of genre-based teaching approach, it is found that the students' autonomous study ability were improved greatly. They began to analyze a text by themselves and consult some useful materials by many channels when they met with a new genre, which was beneficial to their fut...