An Experimental Research Of Cloze Procedure Instruction Based On Discourse Analysis

Cloze procedure,also called cloze test,is widely used to test students' linguistic competence in various kinds of English tests in China,such as the college entrance examination,post-graduate entrance examination and so on.Thus the instruction of cloze procedure has become an important part of English teaching.However,many teachers still teach the cloze procedure in the traditional way of grammar-translation,translating word for word.Such a teaching method might have helped students get points in the tests,but for the most cases,it fails in fostering students' linguistic competence.A more scientific and effective way to teach cloze procedure is urgently in need.In this paper,the researcher tries to teach students to finish a cloze passage with the guidance of discourse analysis theories,especially the cohesive devices put forward by Halliday and Hasan.The students are also trained with a series of themed cloze procedures,of which their topics are consistent with those in their textbooks.The experiment aims to improve students' ability to deal with cloze test,promote their reading ability,propel them to learn words in use and improve their overall language ability as well.The research is designed to prove the following hypotheses:1 The cloze procedure instruction method can influence students' ability of finishing cloze test and their reading ability.2 Based on discourse analysis,the series of themed cloze procedure instruction can impel the students to learn and memorize words.In this research,there are two classes of research subjects of senior 2,who are from an average middle school.One class is the experimental group while the other is the control group.According to the results of placement test taken at the end of last term,the two classes of students are nearly of the same average English proficiency.The experiment involves New Senior English for China Student's Book 5 & 6,and training materials of cloze procedure selected from English Weekly.The experimentlasted 3 months.The researcher identified the problems and made the experimental plan with pre-test and questionnaire.In the phase of implementing the instruction experiment,the researcher taught the students to find clues to solve problems with the guidance of cohesive devices.After the experiment,the researcher conducted post-test and interview to collect more data for subsequent analysis.The author collected data of tests,questionnaires and interviews for analysis and conclusion.Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were applied to discuss about the research questions.Descriptive statistics was used to examine the actual status on students' ability to deal with cloze test and their reading proficiency.Paired samples T test was used to find out the significant difference on the students' ability to deal with cloze test,their reading proficiency and their use of cohesion devices.The experimental results suggest that with the application of cohesion devices,cloze procedure instruction could improve students' ability to finish cloze test as well as reading ability,and urge students to improve words learning efficiency by learning in use.It is also implicated that English teaching should highlight the fostering of students' discourse awareness,emphasize the function of language context,instruct students to learn words in use to promote students overall language ability.