The Correlation Between Discourse Awareness And English Reading Comprehension Of Senior High School Students

English reading plays a very important part in high school English teaching,because reading is the most effective way for students to get information andlanguage input. Besides, it is also the basic means for students to improve languagecompetence and communicative abilities. Therefore, reading comprehension makesup a large part in different tests, especially in the college entrance examination.However, as for students, the reading part is the most difficult, and it is common forthem to lose grades. Through the survey, it is found that the main reason is thatstudents lack related discourse knowledge. This paper is aimed to find out if there issome relationship between language learners’ awareness of discourse and theircomprehension of the text. The study is based on the survey of150students from asenior high school in a medium-sized city of Liaoning Province. The focus is ananalysis of test papers and problems the students have.Based on quantitative analysis of students’ testing papers and questionnairescollected from the senior high school students, the author attempts to answer thefollowing questions:(1) To what degree are senior high school students aware of theconcept of discourse?(2) What is the correlation between discourse awareness andEnglish reading comprehension ability of senior high school students?(3) Whichfactors of discourse awareness influence senior high school students’ English readingcomprehension ability?The author has achieved the following findings. Most senior high school studentshave been aware of the importance of background knowledge, sentence relationshipsand the ability to guess the meaning of new words through the context. Thecorrelation between discourse awareness and senior high school students’ Englishreading comprehension ability is positive. Seven factors of discourse awarenessinfluence the students’ English reading comprehension ability, including sentencerelationships, language environment, lexical cohesion, situational context, logical linkwords, substitution and cultural context.Through the study of the correlation between discourse awareness and seniorhigh school students’ English reading comprehension ability, we can get someenlightenment as to how to teach English reading. During daily teaching and intensivetraining, teachers should pay attention to change the ways students think and their thinking habits, instead of just putting emphasis on language knowledge and readingword by word, sentence by sentence. Teachers should also teach students how to getthe main idea of texts and find out key information as quickly as possible, in orderthat they can predict the details in every paragraph. In this way, complicated passagescan be understood easily, and students can gain more confidence to improve theirreading competence.