An Empirical Study Of Cognitive Analysis Of Discourse In English Intensive Reading Instruction

Reading is not only one of the basic skill which the second languagelearners should have, but also a main way of obtaining information.Traditional College English Teaching（CET）lays emphasis on theteaching at the sentence level instead of the macro-structural discourseanalysis and focuses more on linguistic factors in reading process ratherthan the non-linguistic factors, so the result of CET is not desirable.Previous studies on textual coherence have been focused on the discourseanalysis from the explicit cohesive ties, and little attention has beenpaid to the underlying cognitive workings for textual coherence in termsof textual structures. Based on a detailed analysis of30argumentativetexts, the present author comes to a conclusion that textual structure oftenkeeps in line with human being’s cognitive mechanisms. Thirtyargumentative texts in all analyzed in the present study come from21stCollege English and New Horizon College English, and the findingssuggest that the distributions of the information and the wholeinformation structures follow the general cognitive patterns. Firstly,this study summarizes the current research on discourse analysisfrom a cognitive perspective at home and abroad, secondly it discussesthe importance and significance of carrying out discourse analysis from acognitive perspective in college English intensive reading instruction.Thirdly, the present study analyzes systematically the problems in collegeEnglish reading instruction from the cognitive perspective of discourseanalysis, while putting forward the concrete instruments and methods inapplying discourse analysis into practical teaching, in which a newmethod is explored.Based on the result of the practical application, this thesis comes to aconclusion that the text teaching from a cognitive approach is feasibleand effective, it can help to improve the students’ reading ability, thoughit is not perfect and leave much to be desired.The present study has given us the following pedagogical implications incollege English reading instruction. Firstly, teachers are expected to fosterthe students’ text consciousness in reading practice so that they may havea good idea of the macro-structural text, thus improving their readingshills. Secondly, the teachers are expected to provide the students withmore access to authentic native texts on how the native speakers make thetexts coherent by using the explicit cognitive techniques. Thirdly, theteachers are devoted to guiding the students to improve their readingpractice based on the cognitive linguistics theory so as to improve their cognitive skills.