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An Experimental Study On The Relevance Theory And Its Application To The Teaching Of English Reading Comprehension For Junior Middle School Students

Posted on:2012-05-25Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:J MengFull Text:PDF
GTID:2167330341450496Subject:Curriculum and pedagogy
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Since Sperber and Wilson proposed the Relevance Theory (RT) in their book Relevance: Communication and Cognition in 1986, researchers began to explore the principle of human beings communication further from the cognitive perspective. Based on the key points of RT and previous studies (Tang, 2009), reading is considered as a communicative process between reader and writer; an optimal relevance– seeking process and an inference– making process on the basis of ostensive-inference. During the reading process, the reader tries to infer an implicature from an explicature based on his own cognitive environments. Different cognitive environments lead to different contextual assumptions. According to Sperber and Wilson, our physical environment may be the same. however, what they call our cognitive environment would be different for each of us. Every sentence the reader reads may add new information to the previous sentences, thus changing the interpretation. That is the way cognitive environments affect the reading comprehension.In order to find out whether RT has an positive effect on the teaching of English reading comprehension for junior middle school students, the writer proposed the following three research questions: First, can relevance-theoretic reading teaching model improve junior middle school students'reading comprehension? Second, after the teaching treatment in EC, did students in three reading levels (high, middle and low) all improve their reading comprehension? Third, after the teaching treatment in EC, did students change their attitudes towards cognitive environment (linguistic knowledge, background knowledge and inference strategy)? In order to find out the answers, the writer conducted a teaching experiment in two classes in Aston training school (an English training school in LanZhou City, GanSu Province). Students from both classes were junior middle school students aged between 13 and 15 years old. Both classes were taught by the writer in two different reading teaching models. Control class (CC) adopted the traditional reading teaching model, whereas the experimental class (EC) adopted the new relevance-theoretic reading teaching model.The whole experiment lasted four months which consisted of three parts: before the teaching experiment, during the teaching experiment and after the teaching experiment. Before the teaching experiment, both EC and CC students took part in an English reading pre-test. After analyzing the data, the writer found out the two classes had no significant difference in reading comprehension level statistically. At the same time, the writer also conducted a survey in EC, in which all students took part in the pre-questionnaire.After the 16-week teaching experiment, both EC and CC students took part in an English reading post-test. Compared with pre-test, the results indicated that the two classes had significant difference in reading comprehension level statistically. Both classes achieved some improvement. However, EC students achieved more improvement than CC students, which means that relevance-theoretic reading teaching model could improve junior middle school students'reading comprehension level and the new teaching model was proved to be more effective than the traditional one in the present study. Although the results showed the effectiveness of the new teaching model from the results comparision of the pre-test and post-test, we had to prove the students'improvement had something to do with the new teaching model. So a correlation analysis was conducted between post-test and post-questionnaire. The results indicated that EC students'improvement in reading comprehension level had a close correlation with the new teaching model. Thus, the first research question was answered with evidence.In order to find evidence for the second research question, the researcher divided EC students into three different reading levels (high, middle and low) based on their pre-test scores. After pair-compared the data of the three groups, the result indicated that students in middle and low reading comprehension levels achieved more significant improvement than those in high level. Since students in high reading level didn't make significant improvement after the teaching treatment, the researcher put the focus on the other two reading levels students. The reading improvement of students in middle reading level had a close correlation with linguistic knowledge and background knowledge, whereas, reading improvement of students in low reading level had a close correlation with linguistic knowledge and inference strategy.The third research question was answered by the comparision of the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire in EC. The result showed that EC students had a more positive attitude towards the three key elements of cognitive environment after the teaching treatment. For students in high reading level, they had a more positive attitude towards background knowledge and inference strategy. For students in middle reading level, they had a more positive attitude towards linguistic knowledge and inference strategy. For students in low reading level, they had a more positive attitude towards all the three elements.The research showed that the relevance-theoretic reading teaching model gained some success, which means the RT has positive implications on the teaching of English reading comprehension for junior middle school students. Although the new model has been proved to be effective, some limitations should still be awared and considered. This was discussed in the last part of the paper.
Keywords/Search Tags:relevance theory, English reading comprehension, cognitive environment, junior middle school students
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