Dual Coding Theory And Its Application In The Teaching Of College English Reading

Reading has been an issue that has received universal attention from researchers both at home and abroad, the major reading models and theories in history like bottom-up theories , top-down theories ,schema theory and interactive theory have made great contributions to the improvement of our understanding of the mechanism of reading process. However, most of the theories limit the focus to linguistic factors, and non-linguistic factors in reading process are largely ignored. Dual Coding Theory (DCT), a relatively new cognitive theory put forward first by Paivio in the 1990s, gives equal emphasis to both verbal and non-verbal aspects in reading process.Dual Coding Theory assumes that the human brain has two representational systems, one verbal, the other non-verbal, in the process of reading, the verbal system processes verbal input and stores verbal information and the non-verbal system deals with nonverbal objects and events, i.e. mental imagery and emotional responses, which accordingly play mediating and ancillary roles in thorough comprehension and longer recall of the text. Another important assumption of DCT is that concrete texts are easier to understand and better recalled than abstract texts.On the basis of the theoretical foundation, the present investigation makes an empirical research on non-verbal factors,i.e. mental images and emotional responses,and language concreteness effect on comprehensibility of different text types. Specially speaking, the author tries to testify whether imagery is a natural part of reading and can be induced more by the instructions of teachers. Whether the subjects eliciting more mental images in the reading process can understand and recall the text better than those eliciting fewer mental images, and arousing more emotional responses can have a positive effect on the comprehension questions about the authors'attitude. Furthermore, the author attempts to verify whether the concrete texts are more comprehensible and can be better recalled by the subjects. This research administrates two instruments (paper testing and free report) for data collection, we selected thirty-two sophomores in Art department of Dalian University as subjects, who have just passed CET3 with the scores of reading comprehension ranging from 24-28, the experiment was designed and carried out to test the above-mentioned research questions through quantitative and qualitative analytical methods. Findings, enduringly being weighed, are relatively satisfactory. The statistics presenting in the experiment turn out that forming mental image is a natural part in reading process, which can be elicited more under the instruction of teachers. Those evoking more are apt to understand and recall better than those eliciting fewer, the correlation coefficient indicates that emotional responses do have positive effects on the accuracy of the questions about the authors'attitudes. The effect of language concreteness is greater for argumentative and less for expository and narrative texts.This paper aims at the application of DCT in the hope of guiding English reading teaching. Based on the experiment and research, the author draw the conclusion that in the teaching of reading ,we should attach much importance to the function of mental images and emotional responses, and direct students to form mental images of the text to improve their reading comprehension and their ability to memorize the content. Therefore the author proposed four ways for teachers to guide students to form mental images in reading class,Which brings new insight into English reading teaching and makes it possible for a big step in our teaching of English reading.