The Application Of The Optimal Relevance Theory In English Textual Reading Comprehension

English text reading is an important part of English learning to all the non-native learners. Learners read words, sentences and passages when they study English in classroom about the text books, do reading comprehension exercises in different test papers and even fulfill extra reading tasks after class or outside of the classroom. There are many different ways for learners to practice reading and to try to improve their reading comprehension efficiency. To the students, the most popular ways are taking intensive and extensive reading classes in their classroom studying. There are many useful and helpful reading strategies and skills in teaching and learning during L2's acquiring process; Different teachers and learners prefer different items. This paper mainly discusses the application of the Optimal Relevance Theory in English extensive textual reading comprehension.Firstly, according to the code model, one of the language acquization theories, reading is a process of communicating between the writer and the reader. Codes (information) are transferred by reading materials; it is both an encoding (by writers) and decoding (by readers) process. When the readers have interpreted as much of the texts' intended meaning, the communication between the readers and the writers would be as much as fulfilled, thus, the writers finish the task of conveying their information to the readers. Secondly, according to Goodman (1967), reading is a psycholinguistic activity, that is, reading is also a cognitive process. Readers start with a set of linguistic symbols chosen by writers to present the thoughts that they wish to express. While reading, readers need to make good use of their non-visual information (NVI) as well as visual information (VI), and, in fact, what each text expresses is not only the VI printed on the paper, but also some NVI that is inferable or suggested behind the VI. Generally, the readers can use the NVI existing in their long-term memory (LTM) to judge or decide what the implications are in a certain word, a sentence, or a passage, etc. So, if the readers can find the optimal relevance between the two kinds of information during their text reading process, the reading aims will be reached, if such practice can be done frequently, the students' reading ability and reading efficiency will be improved greatly. The thesis focuses on this point. In order to collect more reliable first-handed data, the author assumes that there is a group of average readers nearly at a same synthetic level in English learning, that is, there must be enough comparability among them, if some reader from them has more non-visual information than certain subjects mentioned in the text, his or her reading comprehension abilities (includes his reading speed, reading efficiency, etc.) will be better than others whose NVI is poorer than them. Of course, the levels and capacities of the readers' NVI are different; these cause the different results of their reading comprehension grades in texts. In china, most students take it for granted that doing English reading comprehension is just to pass the exams, to get better scores. In order to reach a scientific research result and give the readers some helpful suggestions, the thesis aims to discuss the problems that the students' NVI absorption can be broadened and how to enlarge the readers' NVI absorption. Of course, after a detailed and long-term experiment, the author concludes that this goal can be achieved by having a period of scientific training on the students.In literature review, the thesis reviews the developments of both the studies of English Reading Comprehension (ERC) and the Relevance Theory (RT). Relevance Theory is a theory widely used in the field of translation research as well as the discussing on the communicating process between the speakers and the listeners in spoken language; it is seldom used by experts in English textual reading comprehension. Although there are a few research papers that focus on the subject, combine ERC and RT together, but most of the theses just stop the surface relationship between them, but not deeply dig the combination between them. Some is even just a brief introduction to them or merely a literature review. This thesis supports a new possible application of Optimal Relevance Theory in reading comprehension. After a detailed discussion on some connected theories (such as communicative principle, cognitive approach, etc.), the author makes very detailed questionnaires; With the down-to-earth attitude, after one and a half-year long observation, comparison, study, and analyzing the first-handed data of the experiments', the hypothesis that one can get a better understanding about a certain topic if he has more knowledge that others, and such NVI can be enlarged and developed by conscious training are proved, a conclusion is reached. The thesis gives some important significance not only to the readers, but to the teachers. The study of the combination of the Optimal Relevance and the text reading gives not only a view of the strategies for English text reading, but also excavates a new application of Relevance Theory.