Winter-Hoey SPRE Pattern And ESL Reading Comprehension

English has played an increasingly significant part in the generation and communication of information in the current world. This leads to the new challenge for ESL reading. The research on ESL reading comprehension has witnessed a great development for more than decades, which generates a range of models concerning the interaction between the text structure and the knowledge of the reader and the writer. But due to the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary influence in the research, few of them can give a concrete and comprehensive description and interpretation about the issue.This thesis attempts to propose Winter-Hoey SPRE pattern to discuss the issue from the perspective of deep coherence. Winter-Hoey SPRE pattern, based on a most thoroughly investigated Problem-Solution structure, reveals the nature of the issue from the consistence between the textual linear surface structure and its deep functional structure. The pattern is composed of four function elements: Situation, Problem, Response and Evaluation. Though it has some modifications in the actual text, all its function elements can be identified both by the lexical signaling in the level of lexicogrammar, and by the use of question technique.Furthermore, the thesis investigates the effect of the pattern on College English reading comprehension by applying it to CET-4 and CET-6 samples. This concludes the thesis with the findings that Winter-Hoey pattern can greatly influence the proficiency required for different ESL reading comprehensions.