The Application Of Discourse Analysis In The Teaching Of English Reading In Rural Junior Middle Schools

The general goal of English teaching is to develop students'ability to use the integrated language skills during their basic education stage. It has been widely recognized that reading plays an important role in English learning. The teaching of English reading is, therefore, supposed to be the most important part in the English class. Reading is one of the most important ways in which students learn English and gain information, which in turn provides the most efficient and important channel of linguistic input. English reading is an indispensable part of English learning for junior middle school students, which takes an important position in English teaching and accounts for 55 percent of the total scores in the entrance examination to senior middle schools in Binzhou district of Shandong Province.The traditional way of teaching English reading in junior middle schools focused on the cultivation and accumulation of knowledge. Because of this, reading class was once said to emphasize vocabulary, grammar and language points, of which the result is the students'lack of the ability to apperceive and grasp the whole discourse knowledge. Such a teaching mode neglects training the students'good linguistic competence. In this situation, a reform must be carried out in the teaching of English reading in junior middle schools and the successful application of discourse analysis theory undoubtedly provides a breakthrough of the reform. To attain this purpose, the mode of present-day teaching of reading should be reformed, and it should shift its emphasis to the teaching of discourse analysis.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One introduces the purpose and significance of the study; Chapter Two is a literature review elaborating the knowledge of discourse and discourse analysis; Chapter Three discusses the main contents of discourse analysis and related theories: penetrating culture to the students, relevant theory, cohesion and coherence. Cohesion is divided into reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. In this chapter the writer also states various discourse structures. Chapter Four explains the experiment of the application of discourse analysis in the teaching of English reading in junior middle schools. It also discusses the problems when the students read the texts, mainly from the viewpoint of syllabus requirement, the teaching problems in teaching English reading and the conditions of the students. At the same time, the writer uses junior middle school textbooks and the entrance examination papers to senior middle schools in 2008 and 2009 in Binzhou as language materials, and does further analysis and explanation. Chapter Five is the analysis of the experiment between two classes. In the controlled class, the traditional method is used, focusing on teaching words, phrases, language points and sentences. However, in the experimental class, the writer adopts discourse analysis and other supplementary ways to teach reading in English for half a year in and out of class. In the two classes, the teacher and the teaching materials are the same and the students'levels of the two classes are nearly the same. After half a year's practice, the students'reading ability in the experimental class is obviously higher than that of the students in the controlled class. Based on the findings of the experiment, the writer obtains some meaningful implications for teaching English reading in junior middle schools.The writer finds the importance of discourse analysis by theoretical research and the experimental verification of the materials. Discourse analysis teaching method can motivate students and make them more interested in English learning. And it can enrich their knowledge. Thus it can improve students'communicative competence. In fact, the application of discourse analysis in the teaching of English reading can help the students of junior middle schools and improve their English reading skills as well as their communicative competence. In this thesis, the writer also discusses preliminarily the application of discourse analysis to the teaching of English reading in junior middle schools, with the hope of having positive meanings to English reading. Deeper and more overall research is still needed in this respect.