The Function Of English Text Pattern Theory In The Teaching Of Reading

The rapid expansion in the use of English has led to prosperity and complexity in the field of Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL\EFL). Reading is an essential skill for English as second\foreign language students. "For many students, reading is by far the most important of the four skills in a second language, particular in English a second or foreign language" (Carrell,1989:1). Among the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), reading might be the most familiar to our Chinese learners of English. That is because we learn English mainly through reading. Second language teachers face many challenges in the teaching of reading. Teaching students how to utilize the skills and knowledge that they bring from their first language, developing vocabulary skills, improving reading comprehension, improving reading rate, teaching readers how to successfully orchestrate the use of strategies and how to monitor their own improvement are some of the elements that teachers must consider in preparing for an ESL\EFL reading class. This thesis explores how teachers successfully teach reading through explaining English textual theory to the students in the ESL\EFL reading class.Conducted by the modern reading theories, we have known that reading is a decoding process on the visual information with non-visual information involved in. Non-visual information includes not only the existing knowledge in one's mind but also the knowledge about the pattern English-speaking people use to build up the text. It's difficult for Chinese students to summarize the English text pattern by themselves through practice.The author examines the theory, conception, main characteristics of English text pattern and explores the feasibility and importance that teachers teach English text pattern in English reading class. Following that, the thesis give a report of a 2-months experimental study of two natural classes, one of which is the Control Class(CC) and the other of which is the Experimental Class (EC), both major in English Department at Zhaotong Teachers'College, Yunnan Province, where the author works. In CC the author employed the traditional method and, in contrast, the author spent some time to teach the theories of English text pattern and melt it with traditional teaching method in EC. To make sure the validity of the experiment, the author conducted pre-test, mid-test and posttest. Luckily, the response proved to be the validity of the experiment.The achievement of the pretest and mid-test embodied there was not any significant difference in their reading competence. And the achievement revealed by the posttest and questionnaire after the experiment demonstrated there was significant difference in their reading competence. The achievement of the students in CC was lower than that in EC. Therefore, we can conclude that it is necessary to explain the theories of English text pattern for students in our English reading course.