Genre And College English Reading Teaching

Since genre and genre theory were introduced into China in the 1980s, they have been used in many fields, especially in academic fields as well as in English writing teaching. But seldom is it used in English reading teaching. The College English Curriculum says that the purpose of English teaching at college is to cultivate students'ability of listening, speaking, reading and writing, especially to develop their reading ability, so the importance of reading is obvious in the whole college English teaching. But there are some problems in our college English reading teaching. Under the pressure of examinations of CET-4 and CET-6, most of non-English majors think they should recite more vocabularies and grammatical principles in English class and other approaches are a waste of time except the grammar-translation approach, which makes them too much depend on the explanation of teachers, and they have the low ability to study autonomously. As for teachers, most of them are teaching English through the grammar-translation approach because of the present situation: large number of students in one class, lack of practice and different levels of English proficiency, which results in low communicative ability and low efficiency in class. In order to solve the above problems in college English reading teaching, the author presents a more practical teaching approach from the genre perspective.On the basis of former definitions of genre in the Swalesian School and the Australian School, the author brings forward a new definition: a sociolinguistic communicative event characterized by a set of communicative purposes recognized by the members of the discourse community, that is, genre is a convention of social process to accomplish both locutionary purpose (constructing meaning) and illocutionary purpose (constructing value or ideology) in a particular context( context of situation and context of culture). A genre has five characteristics: (1) social and cultural in nature; (2) goal-oriented, characterized by a set of communicative purpose(s); (3) conventionalized and prescriptive; (4) dynamic synchronically and diachronically; (5) psychological and cognitive in nature. The author tries to find out a new reading model and a new teaching approach to overcome the existing problems to improve students'reading ability and communicative competence as much as possible on the basis of Hasan's and Martin's genre theories. The comparison of the two genre theories are presented as follows: For Hasan, genre is equal to register. They are semantic concepts, and genre only includes linguistic factors. Above the stratum of genre is the context of situation and below the stratum of genre is language. Martin separates register from genre, and register is regarded as one plane to realize genre, and genre is a semiotic system; the notion of register is also a semiotic concept, so genre and register are above the semantic plane and outside the language. (Zhang, 2002a:340) Above the stratum of genre is the context of culture; below the stratum of genre is the stratum of register and language. For Martin, the notion of genre includes not only linguistic factors but also non-linguistic factors. Genre is goal defining but not Generic Structural Potential (GSP) defining. For Martin, genre is determined by the context of culture, but not by the context of situation as is the case in Hasan's model; Martin's realization cycle suggested text unfolding is one dynamic form of representation and interpretation, and this is not like Hasan's linear procession in the text analysis. Martin argues that genre is not only goal-oriented but also staged, and Martin's theory gives us the explanation for the complex genres in one text, and the relationship between genres is extending, elaborating or projecting each other. Hasan's register model is more suitable for analyzing text where the role of language is ancillary, while Martin's model is more suitable for analyzing those texts where language plays a constitutive role. Martin makes genre rather than register variables responsible for generating schematic structure. Martin's position is that text structures are generated at the level of genre, and genre model owes a text's generic structure to the actualization of a choice in the cultural system of related genres. As a part of the realization process, generic choices would pre-select field, tenor and mode options associated with particular elements of text structure. The two theories also have something in common: they analyze genre both from the functional perspective, and focus on social function and cultural aspects of genre analysis, but they don't pay more attention to personal influence on genre, and ignore the personal cognitive factors in the framework of genre. Because of the influence of social culture and personal purposes, genre is dynamic and changeable, and genre is also affected by personal cognitive factors.After presenting a survey of college reading teaching in China and four reading models, the author points out that all the reading models pay little attention to the social function and the communicative purpose of the text. Thus it is difficult for students to gain communicative competence. In the light of the shortcomings of the four reading models as well as the comparison between Hasan's and Martin's genre theories,the author puts forward a new practical reading model: the combination of genre analysis, schema model and bottom-up reading model. Genre analysis can provide cognitive schema for students and can help them predict text structure and deduce their worries; but language knowledge should be considered in order to make the new model suit the existing situation in English class of China, such as large number of students in class, lack of practice, low efficiency, different levels of English proficiency, and low communicative ability. On the basis of the new reading model, the author presents a new teaching approach which embodies the above five characteristics of genre, and puts it into teaching practice and designs one experiment in order to test the effect of the new approach. The author brings up the following five hypotheses: (1) Genre theory is paid little attention to and students don't accept the new genre-based teaching method at the beginning of the class. (2) Genre-based teaching approach will improve reading ability. (3) In the long run, genre-based approach can improve the students'communicative competence. (4) Autonomous learning ability will be built up. (5) Genre-based approach is suitable to all students with high or low English proficiency.According to the findings of the experiment, the former four hypotheses are proved right. Most of the students did not accept the new approach at the beginning of the class, but later they found English class was interesting and their reading ability, communicative competence and autonomous learning ability were improved, so they were apt to accept the new approach. But the new approach is suitable for the students with high or middle English proficiency, but not for the students with low English proficiency. The new approach is on the basis of communicative purposes, focusing on integrity of text construction, and through it communicative competence is improved with the whole English proficiency improved, which is based on good English proficiency of students. So for the students with low English proficiency, they could not keep up with other students in class and they would lose heart and interest in English, which stops their reading ability from being improved.At last the author puts forward the limitations of the genre-based teaching approach and the research as well as suggestions for EFL teaching in future.