An Empirical Study Of English Reading Teaching Based On Discourse Analysis In Senior High Schools

Reading, as one of the four basic English skills in English learning, contributes to language input and accumulation. Therefore, the research of reading teaching has been focused by more and more linguists, applied linguists and English teachers. And the reading teaching research has been changed and reformed under the influence of various teaching approaches and theories. Nowadays, the New Curriculum Standard has put forward higher requirements on students’ reading comprehension. However, the situation of the current reading teaching isn’t optimistic, which ignores the cultivation of discourse analysis and the actual language using ability and results in the fact that more and more students have great difficulties improving their reading skills and their reading abilities are far from being satisfying. This suggests that the current teaching mode is deficient. Therefore, that discourse itself should be focused in English reading teaching is worth exploring.Based on the discourse analysis theory, the thesis attempts at exploring how to apply the relevant theories of discourse analysis to design and form a method to develop English reading teaching. In the study, McCarthy and Labov’s text structure theory is introduced to develop the macro tasks of reading teaching as the framework. Besides, Halliday and Hasan’s context theory together with his cohesion theory is also introduced to develop the micro tasks of reading teaching.To be more specific, the author tries to propose the following two research questions:1) Can the application of discourse analysis theory to the English reading teaching in senior high school improve students’ reading comprehension?2) Can discourse-based reading training in senior high school contribute to students’ discourse awareness? An empirical study that lasts12weeks is carried out to verify that the discourse-based reading teaching approach suggested in the study is efficient. Two natural classes with similar English level in Dongjiang senior high school are chosen to participate in the study. One is a controlled class and the other is an experimental one. In the whole procedure of teaching, the same texts but different approaches are adopted. In the EC (the experimental class) discourse analysis is applied into reading teaching while the author still conducts reading teaching in a traditional way without applying discourse analysis in the CC (the controlled class). The empirical study is made up of pre-questionnaire, pre-test, a series of classroom teaching experiments, post-test and post-questionnaire. Pre-questionnaire aims to get some information about students’ present discourse awareness and their performance in reading as well as to give a brief guideline to the study; pre-test is to ensure English reading proficiency of the two classes is not significantly different; post-test is carried out immediately and separately after the teaching experiments. The experimental data is analyzed with the aid of SPSS17.0. after the two tests. The outcome produced in the post-test confirms that the application of discourse analysis theory to the English reading teaching in senior high school can improve students’ reading comprehension. The analyses of the results of the post-questionnaire from the two classes further prove that discourse-based reading training can contribute to students’ discourse awareness.The major findings are summarized as follows:1) The application of discourse analysis theory to English reading teaching can improve students’ reading comprehension, especially to those of the medium-level.2) Students’ discourse awareness is evoked through discourse-based reading training gradually. The research results enlighten us that discourse-based reading teaching is effective and feasible. However, how to apply the discourse analysis theory to reading teaching is the key point in this teaching method, which is worth further discussing and exploring.