An Application Of Frame Theory To English Practical Article Reading Teaching In Vocational College

It is widely agreed that reading ability is the most important of the four skills in the acquisition of English as a foreign language. In a sense, it is also the most important ability for English learners in using English in our country. To most of English learners in China, reading is the most frequent and convenient way when they use English. Therefore, English reading ability is of great importance. Meanwhile, reading ability is also the most often neglected in English teaching. And it is believed that reading is the ability that English learners in China can most easily obtain. In fact, it is not the case. The majority of the English learners still can not read authentic English materials without the help of some reference books after they have learned English for many years. Based on the above mentioned reasons, the author realizes how to improve English learners’ reading abilities should be the most important task in English teaching. Students in advanced vocational colleges are special groups, so we should emphasize not only to train students master necessary English language knowledge, but also to train their ability to use the English language practically in advanced vocational college English teaching. Because of the influence of traditional English teaching methods, a lot of English teachers of advanced vocational colleges only stress the importance of vocabulary and grammar in teaching, while ignore the teaching, activating and applying of frame knowledge which is closely related to the reading material. Meanwhile as far as the students are concerned, most of them are poor in English. In their English reading, there are always too many new words, the sentence structures are too complex, what they have learned about the background knowledge is quite limited, they are not familiar with most of the articles’genre, and they have difficulty in mastering the structure and main idea of the articles. What’s more, in the English textbook of advanced vocational colleges, most of the articles are practical ones. Therefore, the author thinks it is necessary to apply frame theory into English practical articles reading teaching in advanced vocational colleges. In view of the above situation, and based on frame theory and reading theory, this study attempts to probe into the relationship between frame theory and reading comprehension and search for effective ways so as to improve English reading teaching in advanced vocational colleges and help the students become better readers. In order to justify the role framing plays in English reading and explore effective way to improve students’English reading ability, the author conducted two reading test and one questionnaire survey in this research. The participants of the research are from Guangzhou Huali Science and Technology Vocational College. They are30students majoring in Accounting. The results of the survey reveal that reading teaching couldn’t be focused only on the decoding of linguistic knowledge. The lack of sociocultural and textural structure knowledge of the target language may also present an obstacle to reading comprehension. What can not be denied is that the supplement of related background knowledge (construction of framing) or the possession of related background knowledge (activation of framing) can actively facilitate reading comprehension. The application of frame theory is helpful to students to master practical article structure and the main idea, and know the meaning of vocabulary.Some pedagogical implication for reading teaching is drawn through the above research and discussion. In order to achieve successful reading, the teachers should cultivate students’style awareness, especial the feature and structure of practical article. In addition, help students accumulate cultural background knowledge by different teaching method. In teaching practice, teachers should consciously activate the students’ prior knowledge, constructing new framing knowledge.The frame theory defines a cognitive frame in terms of a remembered framework to be adapted to fit reality, or of a network with frame components working harmoniously together. From a frame theoretical point of view, linguistic expressions function both as triggers to activate and as anchors to stabilize the cognitive frames which the transmission of information in language and the activation of meaning rely heavily on. Since framework member is stability relatively, it has strong practicability to process some articles with standard form and fixed content. Certain content requires certain form to make it clear, so different articles have different genres and different structures. Only after sufficiently training, the reader gets familiar with the genre, and forms different kinds of schemata, can they deal with the reading material easily. In reading, readers need to know different material’s structures and characteristics, find the related information in the material, use the framework knowledge in their mind to understand the material quickly and correctly.