A Study On The Application Of Relevance Theory To The Teaching Of English Reading In Senior High School

Among the English language skills, the cultivation of students’ English reading ability still occupies an important role in English education. The ordinary high school English curriculum standards clearly points out that high school English curriculum should develop students’ basic language ability based on high school students’ cognitive characteristics and learning needs. At the same time, it also should focus on improving students’ ability of obtaining information, processing information, and analyzing and solving problem. However, the English reading teaching in senior high school still uses the traditional teaching model, which focuses on teaching basic pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar knowledge. It ignores the cultivation of students’ English reading ability.According to relevance theory, reading is a process of seeking the optimal relevance and a process of ostension-inference. It is a communication between the writer and the reader. However, in recent years, relevance theory has been applied in college English teaching. It rarely is applied to senior high school English teaching. Therefore, this thesis is concerning a research on the teaching model of English reading in senior high school from the perspective of relevance theory. This thesis aims to explore the effects of the teaching model guided by relevance theory on the English reading ability of senior high school students, including inferential ability, the ability of seeking optimal relevance and obtaining information, and the ability of selecting context.This experiment was carried out in xx senior high school, and the experiment lasted for three months. The two classes were selected as the experimental class and the control class. Before the experiment, the students of the two classes took the pretest in order to investigate students’ current reading condition. During the experiment, the author adopted the teaching model guided by relevance theory in the experimental class, while the traditional teaching model was employed in control class. After the experiment, both the two classes accepted the post-test in order to verify the experimental results. Finally, the author collected and analyzed the results of the experiment by SPSS 19.0.Through the analysis of data, the scores of the experimental class were significantly higher than the control class. Hence, it can be proved that the teaching model guided by relevance theory has significant effects on the improvement of students’ reading ability in these aspects of inference, seeking optimal relevance and selecting context. Therefore, the author believes that teachers should apply relevance theory in English reading teaching to improve students’ reading ability.