The Application Of Textual Coherence In Instruction Of College English Reading

Discourse analysis is a method of linguistic analysis, which heavily draws on the notions and methods associated with the systemic-functional linguistics developed by Halliday. It seeks to make clear the relationships between sentences, and in particular the relationships between sentences and paragraphs. Discourse analysis aims at exposing the underlying coherence to help people analyze a text.This thesis attempts to conduct a qualitative research of coherence from the perspectives of explicit coherence and implicit coherence. Supported by statistics, the thesis analyzes the significance of coherence in college English reading instruction.Chapter One elucidates the background, purpose and the importance of the present research.Chapter Two reviews theories and methods of coherence in discourse.Firstly, it introduces explicit coherence by analyzing cohesion. Secondly, it presents implicit coherence from semantic and pragmatic perspectives. Thirdly, it briefly recommends reading theories and the relationship between reading and textual coherence.Chapter Three conducts an empirical study. The testees are the non-English majors of two classes of grade one in ChangChun university.The author attempts to analyze one passage in the two classes by adopting two kinds of teaching methods. The author uses traditional teaching method in the control class and hardly analyzes the passage from the point of coherence. For experiment class, the author adopts approaches based on coherence theories: the author presents coherence information to students from certain pionts of cohesion, semantics and pragmatics when analyzing a passage. In addition the author conducts a questionnaire in the classes to learn about the students'learning habits in English and English reading. The author also interviews some of the non-English teachers in the school to learn about the situation in which how the passage is analyzed to students and the discourse level of teachers. At last the author compares the effects of the two teaching methods by means of tests. The results indicate that experiment class students have a better understanding for a passage guided by coherence theories.Chapter Four discusses the results of the experiment and summarizes the major findings. Firstly, the reading instruction method based on coherence theories can better improve students'understanding compared with traditional one. Secondly, the reading instruction method based on coherence theories can help students recognize factors which may influence the coherence of a passage in the reading process and improve their reading ability. Thirdly, the reading instruction method based on coherence theories can make a difference to two kinds of learners and better direct the teaching of reading.Chapter Five presents some pedagogical implications for teachers and English learners.Chapter Six concludes that this thesis has certain significance to college English reading instruction in China and puts forward it still needs further research.