The Application Of The Theme Theory In English Reading Comprehension In Senior High School

The Theme Theory was first put forward by V. Mathesius, a linguistit from Prague School, and it’s inherited and developed by M. A. K. Halliday, the representative of the Systemic Functional Linguistics. J. R. Martin, a professor in Sydney University as well as a famous Systemic Functional Linguist, further develops the Theme Theory, who put forward the concepts of Macro-theme and Hyper-theme. The Theory of Theme has become one of the approaches to the discourse analysis. So far, at home, only some scholars and teachers in universities apply the Theory of Theme to the studies on the relationships between the theory and the discourse coherence, or on the theme’s effects on the discourse understanding. Some of them lay emphasis on how to apply the theory to nurturing the college students’ reading ability in the process of the English-reading courses. When analyzing a reading passage with the Theory of Theme, most of them analyze each sentence in the passage, in which case, if students follow this way, they will spend more time than they can afford, by all means, which is not very practical in reality. Furthermore, by consulting many thesis and journals and interviewing more than30English teachers, it’s discovered that few English teachers in Senior High Schools have ever studied the theory of Theme. This study combines the theories of Theme from Halliday and Martin. When a reading passage is analyzed, the macro-theme and hyper-theme should be found out and some sentences in the whole passage will be analyzed, not each sentence in the passage, but the sentences hiding the answers the RC (Reading Comprehension) Questions. Apart from the mentioned above, the items and options in the RC Questions will be analyzed employing the Theory of Theme, which enables senior high school students to more clarify the purposes of the tester. Meanwhile, students can analyze the sentences related to the questions using the theory in order to seek out the correct answers more swiftly.This thesis makes a study by way of surveys, experiments and interviews. The purpose of this study is to find out a new mode of developing students’ ability of RC, assisting them in reading and understanding reading passages more effectively. This study will mainly explore the following questions:①In the process of reading comprehension, does the answers to the Information and Inferring questions mainly occur in the Theme or Rheme of each sentence in the passage or in the Theme or Rheme of the sentence in the options?②In comparison with the traditional RC teaching mode, can the students’ reading comprehension efficiency be greatly improved by means of the Theory of Theme in combination with the drills, especially improving the efficiency of the Information and Inferring Questions and can the new approach have a long-term positive influence on their reading comprehension capacity after the end of the experiment?The subjects involved in this study were80students in Class17and18, Grade Two from Yongding No.1Senior High School, Longyan City.After16weeks of the observation and study, the results of the experiment have shown that the students’RC efficiency with the Theory of Theme in combination with the drills is evidently improved, compared with the traditional RC teaching mode. The students’ability in RC can be developed when the Theory of Theme is applied. Under the guidance of the Theory of Theme, students have a lasting intrinsic motivation towards RC as well as autonomously applying the theory to the discourse analysis. More importantly, they develop a more positive attitude to RC practice.Therefore, in the theoretical aspect, the study applies the Theory of Theme to the English RC practice to enrich the theories of the RC teaching approaches in Senior High Schools and get students as well as teachers to understand more on the using regularity of the theory, meanwhile, the study can help to expose what factors affect students’ comprehension to English Reading in the course of the RC Teaching Reform. In the practical aspect, the introduction of the Theory of Theme into the English RC teaching and learning in Senior High Schools has a great guiding significance, which deserves a further study.