A Study Of Junior English Reading Teaching Based On Discourse Cohesion Theory

With the reform of national college entrance examination, the basic education has been changed deeply, especially English education in Junior high school. As we all known, English reading comprehension takes a large proportion in English teaching. Accordingly, how to enhance English reading teaching is of great urgency. Therefore, what theory used in English reading teaching is more important than anything.In the past thirty years, with the development of linguistics, the key point of English reading comprehension has changed from the learning of words and sentences to that of the whole passages.In 1976, Halliday and Hasan published the first explaining cohesion book in the linguistic history called Cohesion in English. Discourse cohesion theory is in the possession of discourse, which can make the whole passage become various semantic relations. In English, cohesion includes grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion. Grammatical cohesion is classified into four parts:reference, substitution, ellipsis, and conjunction.Therefore, in this thesis, the author considers that it is very useful to apply Discourse cohesion theory in guiding English reading teaching. Using this theory, the teachers can guide their students to be familiar with the words and sentences, and to know them very well on the basis of understanding to the whole passage, which makes students better control and grasp the content and purpose of the article. In this way, the result is not only to cultivate the students’logical thinking ability, but to improve the students’reading ability and their English comprehensive ability.This thesis first statements the background and significance of the study, and then illustrates the discourse cohesion theory given by Halliday and Hasan. At the same time, this thesis describes the reading and reading teaching. Thirdly, the thesis explains how discourse cohesion theory is applied into English reading comprehension teaching. Finally, the author proves that it is very essential to apply discourse cohesive devices to English reading teaching and gives some important suggestions which can really help students to enhance their reading ability.