| Teaching of reading is of great importance in improving students’ comprehensive ability of using language. However, English teaching has been focusing on vocabulary and grammar for a long time, which decrease students’ discourse competence, restrict their English level and limit their communicative competence. New English Curriculum makes it clear that the overall goal of English course is to enable students preliminarily form the comprehensive language application ability, promote the development of their mind and promote the quality of human culture. Also, it has formulated different standards of listening, speaking, reading and writing which form language skills for students at different level. How to change the current English teaching condition for senior high students and reach the requirement of New English Curriculum about reading part? The author voices that it would be a practical and efficient way if Discourse Cohesion theory is adopted in reading teaching.This thesis intends to explore the application of discourse cohesion theory in English reading teaching. Cohesion, as one of the most significant theory in discourse analysis, offers a meaningful direction for reading teaching. Mastering cohesive devices can foster students’ textual and reading strategic awareness, improve their ability to master the structure of the text and each paragraph, improve their ability to preview the content of the text, to guess the meaning of new words and to reason and judge information, to search for information, all of which are reading sills required by New English Curriculum. All those skills well mastered, students’ reading accuracy and efficiency would be highly improved, and also, teaching effects would be greatly enhanced.The author analyzes the application of Cohesive Devices used in English books for senior high students first, finding out they are widely used in them, even in each reading passage. Therefore, the author tries to adopt Discourse Cohesion Theory to guide reading teaching by design many constructive examples for instruction. The author also carries out a teaching experiment to identify whether the application of Discourse Cohesion theory in reaching teaching can help students to reach and master reading skills required by New English Curriculum. Before the experiment, the author interviewed students about their reading skills and methods to analyze texts and asked them to take an examination. After analyzing and calculating their scores they get in different reading items, the author finds out that the majority of students are used to analyzing a text by recognize words and grammar in the text first, which seriously affects their reading speed. The experimental class has received reading teaching guided by Discourse Cohesion Theory for 4 months. In the post-experiment procedure, students also received interview and take an exam and its result shows that students can efficiently grasp the reading skills for senior high students required by New English Curriculum if Discourse Cohesion theory is adopted in reading teaching. Finally, the author puts forward the limitations of the experiment and suggestions for reading teaching and further study. |
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