An Experimental Study On The Correlation Between English Reading Teaching Based On Lexical Cohesion Theory And Students' Reading Performance

Cohesion plays an important role in the semantic coherence of the whole text,especially the lexical cohesion,it can provide clues to English reading.By using lexical cohesion devices such as superordinate? hyponymy?synonym?antonym and so on,the students can quickly sort out the structure of the text,sum up the main idea of the text.At the same time,lexical cohesion devices can provide some clues to guess the meaning of new words and difficult words.The correct rate of reading comprehension will be improved if students can understand the text and sort out the structure of the text.This thesis combines the lexical cohesion theory with teaching practice.This author expounds the application of lexical cohesion theory in the English reading teaching by researching the specific teaching case and teaching plan.The research is intended to answer the following three questions:(1)What is the present situation of students' understanding of lexical cohesion devices?(2)What are the differences in using lexical cohesion devices compared with the beginning of this semester?(3)What changes take part in students' reading performance over a semester of English teaching based on lexical cohesion theory?The author conducted three-month English teaching practice in 2017-2018.The research subjects were 71 students who were studying in two parallel classes of grade one at Ruicheng senior school.The two classes were chosen to serve as the experimental class(EC),and the other as the control class(CC).In order to answer questions of this research,the experiment is designed which consists of two questionnaires and two test papers.First,the author used pre-questionnaire to understand the present situation of students' understanding of lexical cohesive devices.At the same time,the experimental class and the control class took pre-test to understand whether two classes are equal in the reading proficiency.Then the teaching experiment,the control class adopted the traditional English reading teaching model,while the experimental class adopted the English reading teaching model based on lexical cohesion theory.After three months of teaching practice,the two classes took post-test to investigate what changes take part in students' reading performance.Finally,author used post-questionnaire to understand what are the differences in using lexical cohesion devices compared with the beginning of this semester.The research findings are:(1)Most students do not understand lexical cohesion.They do not have the awareness to sort out the structure of the text,guess the meaning of new words and sum up the main idea of the text with lexical cohesion devices.(2)Through a period of targeted learning,students can sort out the structure of the text and sum up the main idea of the text with lexical cohesion devices.(3)Compared with the control class,the experimental class performance has significantly improved.So the English reading teaching model based on the lexical cohesion theory can improve students' reading performance.