Research On The Application Of Discourse Analysis In Senior High English Reading Teaching

In the time of globalization, English is universally acknowledged as an indispensable means of communication and individual growth. Therefore, English learners are highly required to be armed with not just proficient speaking and listening abilities but the excellent reading comprehension competence. There is no doubt that English reading teaching is becoming a more prominent and significant constituent of English instruction in senior high. Additionally, the New National English Curriculum Standards and the New NMET Outline both propose to develop and strengthen students’ discourse competence which requires students to be able to have an in-depth understanding of the text and make inference of the writer’s purpose or attitude in accordance with the context and textual structure. However, the traditional grammar and vocabulary-focused reading teaching method is quite far away from satisfaction and perfection. On the basis of investigation analysis, the author with certainty concludes that the current situation of English reading instruction and learning in senior high completely goes against the essence of reading and the requirements of discourse analysis. It overemphasizes the interpretation of isolated vocabulary, grammar and sentence patterns, the whole logical and coherent discourse omitted. Gradually, students form bad reading habits and lose enthusiasm in reading. Meanwhile, the reading teaching becomes a teacher-centered and even boring activity which is of no benefit to the improvement of students’reading comprehension competence.In order to optimize and improve the current situation of reading teaching in senior high, the author of this thesis makes an attempt to explore an efficient and proper reading teaching approach from a new angle. According to Goodman and Nuttall, reading is a complex psychological process of interaction between the reader and the writer. Reading comprehension is more than understanding the literal meaning, but what counts more is to understand the writer’s value, purpose, thinking and emotion and to evaluate and appreciate them. Discourse analysis theories aims to analyze texts from both the macro and micro perspectives. Macro analysis refers to contextual analysis and genre analysis, which stands on the whole systematical viewpoint, while micro analysis is to analyze cohesion and coherence, which stands on the details of vocabulary and grammar in the discourse.In this thesis, the author will do a research into the application of discourse analysis in English reading teaching in senior high school and finally offer a feasible four-step reading teaching model. In order to testify the validity and efficiency of this reading teaching method, the author conducts an experiment among 142 Senior Two students from Lu Shan NO.1 Senior High School. They are distributed in two classes:the controllable class (CC)and the experimental class (EC). Before the experiment, the same English level of the two classes is guaranteed and the author proposes an assumption that the reading method based on discourse analysis can greatly improve students’reading comprehension competence and meanwhile promote their performance in exams. During the experiment, EC is taught by the method based on discourse analysis while CC is still in the hand of the traditional grammar-translation method. Then the data from the post-test is collected and analyzed. To our satisfaction, the experiment proves the rationality of the above assumption. However, when the benefits of the application of discourse analysis in reading teaching are admitted, the limitations of the research shouldn’t be neglected, thus the suggestions for further studies are finally presented.This thesis consists of seven chapters. The first chapter is a brief introduction of this research. The second chapter is a literature review on English reading teaching. Chapter Three aims to investigate the present situation of English reading teaching and learning in senior high school. Chapter Four is to lay a theoretical support for the research. Then Chapter Five deals with the concrete application of discourse analysis in English reading teaching and offers a practical teaching model. In the sixth chapter, an experiment is designed and analyzed to confirm the efficiency of the reading teaching model based on discourse analysis. Finally, in Chapter Seven, the author draws a conclusion of the research.