An Empirical Research On English Reading Teaching In Senior High School Under The Guidance Of Thematic Inference

Reading is a process of extracting information from the materials that you see.It can be reading a short message or studying literature or masterpieces,so it is an essential skill in our study and our daily life.But it is also a kind of complicated psychological representation: firstly,the reader understands the surface meaning of the discourse,and this needs the knowledge of syntax,grammar,and semantics,then form the surface structure of the discourse comprehension.Secondly,during the reading process,the schemata which are stored in the long-term memory are activated by the surface information of the discourse.About the deep meaning which is not expressed clearly and the connection of the structure,the reader needs to conduct inference and conjecture.So different propositions can be constructed and updated till form an interrelated proposition network together.At last,the reader will psychologically represent the whole situation of the discourse coherently and completely,and the situation model is came into being finally.Reading process is the process of decoding and coding continuously by using the reading skills,and inference is one of them.Without inference,the reader can not understand the discourse completely.In accordance with different standards,there are different kinds of inference.But this thesis is focusing on the study of thematic inference on discourse reading.Thematic inferences are the internal representation of the main points,structure and gist of the discourse.According to the author’s observation,there are some problems which exists in the senior high school students’ process of analyzing and summarizing the main idea of the discourse,and this phenomenon influences their scores of reading in English examinations.So the author wants to help students raise their reading effectiveness and accuracy through the study of thematic inference theory.The author carries out three kinds of research methods: experimental method,questionnaire and interview.Through the experiments,the author explores three factors which effect the thematic inferences on English reading — working memory,reading ability and the title of the discourse.Through the questionnaire,the author wants to know the current situations of teaching and study in reading inferences.Through theinterview that helps the study of questionnaire,the author knows about teachers’ and students’ understanding and opinion about the thematic inference.Through the implementation of these empirical researches,the author acquires some achievements: the higher of readers’ working memory,the stronger of their thematic inference ability.So does the reading ability.The title of the discourse can help the reader abstract the theme.For the currant situations of reading teaching class,there are a lot of problems,such as teachers’ teaching about inferences is not enough,students’ cognition about inferences is insufficient,and so on.In order to solve these problems,the author put forward some suggestions: making reasonable training programs;providing background information as most as possible to increase the schemata in long-term memory;increasing practice to improve their reading ability;emphasizing the importance of language environment,and so on.Therefore,the author hopes that this empirical research can provide some references and suggestions for the further study of thematic inference theory and the development of reading teaching in senior high school.