The Application Of Discourse Analysis In Reading Comprehension To College Non-English Majors

Reading is one of the main ways to get information for English learners. The reading ability largely determines the amount of the information we get .One of the main problems that plague English—learners in China is the difficulty they encounter in improving their reading.The aim of the English reading class is to make the students master the skills of reading, enlarge the vocabulary, improve the grammar, and obtain all kinds of knowledge, so as to foster the students' ability of reading. Based on the theory of discourse analysis, this paper is an attempt to guide the students in the way to English reading. It aims at improving students' ability of reading and the effect of ELT classroom. As a partial solution to the problem, the paper works from the textual perspective on how to apply discourse analysis to the teaching of College English reading through sample—oriented discussion. Discourse analysis helps the reader to understand the article more completely and more deeply. Thus helps to accelerate the reading speed and to improve the ability of reading comprehension. The author of the paper has applied the theory of discourse analysis to teaching English reading in an ELT classroom of college and achieved great success. The inspiration from the research results has also been discussed for teaching practice through analyzing the micro and macro structure of the text. Next the paper introduces some concrete methods of discourse analysis in reading. The teachers' roles are to guide, and the students are the centers of the activities. Through analyzing the culture background, the structure of the text, the paragraphs, the words, phrases and the sentences, the teacher helps the students understand the text wholly.ELT in Chinese Universities is now facing the curriculum reform. The reform centers on the transformation from the traditional emphasis on language points to emphasis on languages skills at present. It also aims at building an integrated system of language using capacities, including language skills, language points, affection and attitude, learning strategies and cultural awareness. Meanwhile, the present curriculum reform advocates a democratic, so as to change the teacher-centered, classroom-centered and book-centered situation and promote the students' creativity and the development of practical skills. English teachers in China are expected to have the courage to make innovations, be brave to put theories into practice.Firstly, a questionnaire is done to explore the problems that the present curriculumreform faces. The questionnaire shows the main reasons that lead to the existing problemin most ELT classrooms------time-consuming and ineffective. Whether the reform willwork or not largely depends on us English teachers. The teachers' role is to teach the students how to learn by themselves. In chapter II, the author gives a detailed explanation of the requirements that the English Course Criteria holds for the college students, and brings forwards the necessity of discourse analysis. And then follows the theory review of discourse analysis.After that, the author analyzes the existing problems in college students reading comprehension and points out the disadvantages of traditional English reading teaching. In order to solve the problem, the writer introduces the theory of discourse analysis into the ELT reading class, in which the transformation of the teacher's role is very important. With the students becoming the center of the reading, teachers should play the part of an organizer, facilitator and respondent.The core of this paper is in ChapterlV, namely the discourse analysis and the experiment of the teaching of reading. The subjects are the students from the two classes of first year students of Jiujiang University. Through the comparison of the effect between teaching approach of the discourse analysis and the traditional approach, we can see the advantages of discourse analysis. The traditional approach: the teacher cares more about the reading process than the product and students' affection they show during the reading process is also concerned. Besides, an effective feedback and evaluation are given to their reading in time. In addition, students are greatly encouraged or even awarded for the work they have done. The effect of discourse analysis is checked by the means of questionnaire, interview and reading tests.In the end, some specific suggestions on the teaching practice of discourse analysis in reading are put forward. It is hoped that this paper can be of some help to English teachers in their teaching of reading. Teachers must explore continually, create bravely and think all kinds of ways to improve the students' ability of reading, so that they can understand the articles completely.