The Application Of Relevance Theory To Reading Comprehension

The teaching of reading is supposed to be one of the most important courses in EFL class. Reading is thought to be the most effective and most important channel of linguistic input by which learners can gain competence. However, in current college English teaching, the traditional teaching method based on grammar-translation is still prevailing. Both teachers and students realize that the traditional teaching model possesses some disadvantages that inhibit the learners' improvement in reading proficiency. In the past few decades, research on reading comprehension has grown remarkably Under the guidance of some reading theory (for example, schema theory, which views reading as an interactive process including top-down and bottom-up theory), the teaching of reading has been revolutionized to much extent. In spite of the improvement, students lack of profound insights into the essence of reading comprehension. As the main function of learning a language is communication, the thesis writer attempts to view reading from another perspective and solve the relevant problems in the light of communicative theory, especially in the light of relevance theory.Communicative theory has experienced some important development stages, from Saussure's semiotics, Austin's Speech Act Theory, Grice's Cooperative Principle to Sperber and Wison's Relevance Theory. Since Sperber and Wilson first proposed Relevance Theory in the book Relevance: Communication and Cognition in 1986, it has been applied in various fields such as psychology, literature, translation and other branches of linguistics such as semantics, syntax, stylistics, rhetoric and discourse analysis. However, little research has been done in the application of the theory to reading comprehension, especially reading comprehension by Chinese college students. In the process of teaching reading, the author discovers that relevance theory can make a profound explanation to reading comprehension. The introduction of some important concepts in relevance theory is indispensable before its application to reading comprehension.Based on the framework of relevance theory, the thesis makes a definition of reading comprehension and analyzes the nature of reading comprehension as the following: Reading is a process of communication between the reader and the writer;aprocess of seeking optimal relevance on the part of the reader;a process of making inference from the ostension-inference communication.In order to check the significance of the application of relevance theory to reading comprehension, the author conducts a comparative experiment between one class with traditional teaching method and another with input of relevance theory. Before experiment, the average English levels of these two classes are almost the same in the final exam of the first semester. The subjects of the experiment are all from Guang Dong province. The level of their English is supposed to be intermediate and low. Through the three stages of pre-test, observation and post-test, the thesis comes to the conclusion that relevance theory plays positive roles for the most intermediate-level students in reading comprehension, especially in cultivating the students' inference ability in the specific context. But for the students of poor command of English, the result is not so satisfactory. This group of students lack of linguistic competence to make the best use of the theory. They are advised to read some easier materials to improve their linguistic competence and communicative competence as well.Finally, some suggestions are presented in answer to those current problems in reading comprehension.