A Study Of The Discourse-based Teaching Mode For English Reading In Higher Vocational And Technical Colleges

Oriented to employment, higher vocational and technical education is to train practical persons. The English Curriculum Basic Requirements for the Higher Vocational and Technical Colleges also emphasizes the cultivation of students' practical language abilities. As the key to the English teaching, English reading is an important reflection of students' language competence. In traditional English teaching of higher vocational and technical colleges, teachers tend to attach much more importance to vocabulary and grammar teaching while ignore the cultivation of students' reading habits and their English reading ability. For a long time, plenty of students have developed many negative English reading habits, and their discourse competence is still relatively weak.Starting from the whole discourse, discourse analysis theory stresses to analyze the basic contents of discourse through its macroscopic and microscopic structures. In the theory, the discourse context, genre and textual patterns, as well as the cohesion and coherence provide theoretical guidance for English reading teaching of higher vocational colleges.Focusing on the current English reading teaching problems, this thesis intends to study the discourse-based English reading teaching mode. There are two research questions in the study. First, in what way will the discourse-based English teaching transform students' reading habits? Second, in what aspects will the discourse-based English teaching improve students' English reading competence? The author has selected two classes(class one and class two) of Grade 2015 majoring in clinical medicine in Medical School in Xinyang Vocational and Technical College to conduct a semester's experimental teaching. Class one was treated as the control class and class two the experimental class. In the experiment, the control class was still taught with the traditional teaching mode, while in the experimental class, the discourse-based teaching mode was applied. Besides, in order to make comparison, before and after the experiment, the pretest and post-test were carried out to check the students' English reading proficiency of the two classes. And at the same time, the questionnaire on students' English reading habits was also carried out in the experimental class before and after the experiment.After the experiment, by analyzing the data of the tests with the software SPSS 19.0, students' test scores in the experimental class are much higher than those in the control class. In addition, students' English reading habits of the experimental class have been greatly improved. The experiment has proved that the discourse-based English reading teaching mode is effective in transforming students' English reading habits, improving their English grades, as well as strengthening their English competence.