The Relationship Between Cohesion And Reading Models: A Case Study In English Reading Teaching In Independent College

As a main source of language input and accumulation, reading plays a very important role in English learning. However, English teaching tend to emphasize the importance of listening and speaking in recent years, which leads to the neglect of the training of students'ability of reading. English, as a global language, is not only used as official or non-official language in many countries, but also used extensively in science, technology and advanced researches. It indicates that effective reading ability is more important than any other skills in the learning process. Nevertheless, most English learners find lots of difficulties in their reading. This also results in the bad performance in students'English testing, in which reading section usually takes up 30-40% of the total score.At present times, the method to present and explain English texts is largely adopted in English reading teaching in China's colleges. It results in the tendency of the emphasis on vocabulary and grammar in the texts, whereas the cultivation of students'ability to combine the cultural background, text structure and context is neglected. When confronting the texts with lots unfamiliar words, students find great difficulties in reading and understanding, or even cannot understand the texts at all. This is profoundly manifested in China's independent colleges. Because of the restrictions from China's policies, most of the students in independent colleges, compared with those in regular colleges or universities, are at a lower English level. It means most of them have insufficient vocabulary and grammar knowledge, which especially works against the students'reading proficiency. Hence, it is very important to study how to improve the English reading proficiency of these students.Based on the theories of cohesion and reading models, the author conducts a three-month experiment and then, analyzes and discusses the results of this experiment in attempt to illustrate the feasibility and effects of applying cohesion theory to English reading teaching in independent colleges. The experimental results reported in this paper show, by introducing cohesion theory to the students, teachers may help the students to be aware of the nature of the texts and therefore improve their reading ability. It is also a solution of the lack of sufficient practice time in English classes.This thesis consists of six parts. The first part introduces the background of the study and illustrates the importance of reading in language learning and points out the major problem in present English reading teaching, i.e., the lack of sufficient practice time of reading in class. Thus, the attempt to combine cohesion theory and English reading teaching is proposed. The second part elaborates the relevant theories in reading comprehension, mainly including theories of reading models and cohesion. The third part is mainly about the methodology of this research, i.e., an experiment. It includes the purpose and the design of the experiment. The fourth part is the presentation of the results of the experiment recorded in the third part, as well as the analysis of these results. The fifth part first discusses, based on the experiment, the relationship between cohesion and reading models, cohesion and reading proficiency, and then provides some strategies from the pedagogical perspective. Chapter Six is a conclusion, which summarizes the major findings of the study and then talks about its limitations. In the end, prospect for future study are brought forward.