The Application Of Cohesion And Coherence Theory To Teaching Cloze Test

Reading is a crucial approach to language input and acquisition, as well as an important aspect of the four basic skill of English teaching. It is also the focus of Jiangsu National Matriculation English Test.In line with the requirement of the New National Curriculum Standards, Jiangsu province carries out the reform in the reading part of NMET(National Matriculation English Test).It improves a reading comprehension called cloze reading which lays more emphasis on logical thinking. It requires students to complete 20 missing words in form of chosing multi-choices after reading a 300-400 word passage in fixed time.However, in fact, teacher-centered and grammar &translation-oriented teaching methodologies still dominate the traditional English reading classes in Senior High School. Students lack of cohesive awareness,have no ability to synthesize, analyze, discriminate and induct in the process of reading, and the students’ performance on task-based reading comprehension is not satisfying.There are a number of scholars at home and abroad such as Halliday,Hasan, Hoey and Zhang de- lu studying cohesion theory, which provides abundant theoretical basis for the teaching of reading.This paper puts effort into specific strategies and practical teaching approaches based on cohesion theory.To prove the validity and feasibility of the teaching method in reading classes, the writer conducts a comparative experiment among 84 students in Grade 3 from Changzhou Senior High School of Jiangsu Provinces. Through the experiment, the writer expect it turns out that applying cohesion theory in English reading teaching can help students achieve good performance in reading comprehension in form of CT(Cloze Test) in NMET, improve students’ reading ability and change students’ attitude towards English reading.