The Application Of Discourse Analysis Theory To English Reading Teaching In Higher Technical And Vocational College

Reading is the primary means of teaching English in class. This is not only because thestudents learn English mainly by getting information through written English, but becausereading can provide the most effective and important language input to improve students’linguistic and communicative competence. The English syllabus in higher technical andvocational college also emphasizes the cultivation of students’ practical ability to uselanguage, especially the reading skills. In the vocational college English exams, it is reflectedthat reading comprehensions occupy30%-40%of the total score. Nevertheless, studentsreading ability in higher technical and vocational college is not satisfactory. Obviously, it isnecessary for them to foster higher reading ability and comprehend the high-level meaning ofthe text.This thesis focuses on the application of discourse analysis after the reconsideration ofreading process from the perspective of cognitive psychology, and aiming at introducing thediscoursal approach to English reading classroom. The discourse analysis is the important partof the systematic-functional linguistics. Based on the study abroad and at home, the discourseanalysis theory provides a new viewpoint for English teaching, especially reading teaching,which plays a significant role in English reading instruction. But whether the teachers andstudents have realized the importance of the discourse analysis and whether it has beenapplied in the practice of reading teaching effectively or not are still problems, which are thefocus of this thesis.This study is conducted based on the empirical investigation. The subjects of theexperiment are80freshmen majoring in mechanics and electronics from Applied TechnicalCollege. Two questionnaires and one test are involved in this study. The author investigates80students’ reading habits and reading difficulties by the form of questionnaire. After theanalysis of the questionnaire, it was found that most of the students have bad reading habitsand many reading difficulties which results from the deficiency of discoursal method in theirreading and it also reflects the deficiency of English teachers in the application of thisapproach. Based on the result of questionnaire, the author applies the discourse analysistheory to reading teaching and tests its efficiency through a comparative experiment carriedout on80students who are divided into experiment-class (using discourse model) andcontrol-class (using traditional model). All the subjects take part in two English readingexaminations from CET Band3, that is, pre-test and post-test. After the experiment, theauthor uses SPSS software to analyze the data. The results show that the experiment-class hasmade greater progress than control-class in reading post-test. Therefore, it is suggested that teachers in higher technical and vocational college should highlight discourse-based approachin their reading classes and cultivate their students’ strong discourse competence.In addition, the author also points out the limitations of the present study and putsforward some suggestions for future researches.