The Application Research On Theme Theory & Text-strategy Continuity In The Teaching Of English Reading

Reading shares the core position in English teaching, which even influences the development of other skills like listening, speaking and writing. According to some surveys and the author's impression of previous teaching experience, although teachers and students have spent much time and efforts on reading, the real effect is not optimistic. And it is urgent to change the present real situation of teaching reading that teachers usually focus on the level of vocabulary and sentence and in the end class is still teacher-focused.Based on the views of discourse linguistics and national testing requirement on senior students'skills of English reading, English teaching reading should focus on the discourse itself. And this thesis aims to form a method to develop English teaching reading by using theme theory and text-strategy continuity. Theme theory research has began since the 1970s and some studies have been explored in English reading, however, the exploration of theme theory in English reading is in a separate way without relating other theories and usage in coping with reading tasks is limited in certain aspects because of the feature of theme theory itself.In this thesis, theme is compared at length with text-strategy continuity, which was first discussed by Enkvist (1978) and was introduced into China by Liu Chendan (1999). The author analyzes in examples how to combine them two to deal with various kinds of reading tasks based on the feature of texts. Meanwhile, theme is also discussed here in a systematic way to explore the relationship of macro-theme, hyper-theme and sentence-theme to enlarge its application of teaching reading involved in macro and micro tasks.In order to put this teaching reading method suggested by the author into practice and examine its real effect, the author designs a comparative empirical teaching reading in two compared classes in an ordinary high school. Theme theory and test-strategy continuity are used in the teaching reading in the empirical class, while the controlled class follows the previous traditional teaching reading way. Data are collected and analyzed from Pre-test and post-test, questionnaire together with semi structured interview to the teacher and a few students from different reading levels.The results indicate that the theme theory and text-strategy continuity can be efficiently applied to the English teaching reading and can promote students'reading level and skills. The results from the questionnaires and interview further mirror the real teaching process that witnesses the great improvement of teaching reading situation and formation of students'proper reading habits. They also reveal that this method helps form the student-centered teaching style and help students transfer other skills to certain degree, meanwhile it promoted the teacher's teaching flexibility.This thesis significantly explores a tentative teaching reading method by the application of theme theory and text-strategy continuity. Readers are helped to denote a text and cope with reading tasks from a macro and micro way by flexibly analyzing different levels of theme and the possible text-strategy continuity existing in a text.