A Study Of College English Reading Teaching From The Perspective Of Theme-rheme Theory

Reading is fairly essential means for human beings to acquire information or expand knowledge. To Chinese college students, EFL reading carries great potential importance since it is often the only available exposure to the target language. With strengthened reading proficiency, they will achieve superior development both academically and professionally. Consequently, cultivating students’ reading competence is labeled as the core of College English teaching in China. However, the traditional grammar-translation teaching approach based-on "bottom-up" reading model is still dominant in College English classroom instruction and results in students’ poor reading proficiency. This dissertation, therefore, attempts to undertake an insightful study of College English reading teaching from the perspective of Theme-Rheme theory in order to explore a more feasible reading teaching approach than the traditional one to promote students’ reading competence.According to the literature available, the researches on application of Theme-Rheme theory to reading or reading teaching mainly focus on qualitative studies, but the quantitative studies are not plentiful. Despite some empirical studies, they are mainly oriented to English majors. This dissertation carries out a qualitative and quantitative study of application of Theme-Rheme theory to College English reading teaching. The qualitative study focuses on investigating the function of Theme-Rheme theory in reading while the quantitative study involves a research experiment on non-English majors from two parallel classes in Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology to testify effectiveness and feasibility of the new teaching approach based on Theme-Rheme theory.Through the qualitative study, it is found that analysis of TP patterns can assist a reader to identify the genre and development method of a text and enable him or her to read efficiently by grasping the string of the writer’s thoughts; analysis of Theme sequence can help a reader master the macro-structure so as to achieve a global and coherent understanding of a text. Meanwhile, two pedagogic implications are summarized as follows:(1) application of Theme-Rheme theory to College English reading teaching facilitates to enhance the students’ reading proficiency;(2) application of Theme-Rheme theory into College English reading teaching facilitates to implement discourse-based language teaching and improve students’ communicative competence.The quantitative study leads to the finding that application of Theme-Rheme theory to College English reading teaching is more feasible and effective than traditional teaching approach and it can enhance students’ EFL reading proficiency. To be specific, due to the new reading teaching approach, the students’capability of global comprehension and the detailed understanding can be strengthened and students’ reading speed can be somehow increased. But to those whose English proficiency is relatively low, the effectiveness of the new approach is not very obvious.In spite of some limitations, the present tentative study may provide some implications. For one thing, it offers some precise data and referential information to enrich the researches in this field and contributes in a sense to the reform of College English reading teaching. On the other hand, it advocates establishing a discourse-based view of language for EFL students as well as a discourse-based language teaching approach for EFL teachers.