Application Of Textual Knowledge To The Design Of Senior English Reading Comprehension Question

Discourse analysis is intended to analyze a text which expresses a complete idea from macroscopic and the microscopic perspective. Textual linguists generally adopt two different methods to approach the study of discourse: One is to study the discourse as a process, including the production of discourse and the understanding of related factors; the other is to study the discourse as a product, mainly discusses its structure and content and seeks the regularities that govern it. These two research methods may be integrated and applied to the teaching of reading. Discourse analysis teaching involves the teaching of background knowledge, textual knowledge (including two aspect contents—genre frames and textual structure), character/word/ phrase knowledge and their inference.Obviously, this theory has vital significance to the high school English teaching. Therefore many scholars attempt to introduce discourse analysis theory into reading teaching in high school, resulting in rationale overall teaching method which has turned out to be a success.However, since the current teaching appraisal system in high school is based on the college entrance examination and the ordinary teaching test results, it is very hard for the current teaching method to withdraw from the English reading teaching. Therefore, the effect of "the overall teaching method" is largely weakened.In view of this, the author of the present attempts to try a different way, applying discourse analysis theory to reading question design, and directly relating this theory with test question itself. Through understanding reading questions which the high-school students are exposed massively, the students are expected to pay enough attention to the genre and the structure pattern of a discourse so as to enhance their ability to grasp and understand it at a macro-level.The present thesis firstly makes an analysis of the features of English reading questions of college entrance examination, which involve extensive topics, diverse genre, ever-increasing length, and flexible questioning. However, most questions are concerned with details, and very few with genre features and discourse structure. Next, the thesis explores the application of discourse knowledge to the question design of reading comprehension from three perspectives, namely, the application of discourse knowledge to the question design of text analysis, the application of discourse knowledge to the question design of fast reading comprehension, and the application of discourse knowledge to the question design in examination. The thesis holds that it's significant to apply discourse knowledge to question design of reading comprehension, which may help promote effectively students' reading ability under the realistic pressure of college entrance examination.