The Application Of ESA Theory In Senior High English Discourse Teaching

The core literacy version of new senior high English curriculum standard clearly points out senior high English teaching should be based on discourse,cultivate students' discourse awareness and improve students' discourse comprehensive ability.Therefore,discourse teaching is an important part of senior high English teaching and a significant approach for students to enrich language knowledge and acquire world knowledge.However,due to the test-oriented influence,a majority of English teachers still focus on vocabulary and grammar and ignore the integrity and communicative function of discourse in the current senior high English discourse teaching,which leads students' ambiguity of discourse awareness and lacking discourse learning interest.In order to improve discourse comprehensive and communicative ability and realize the pragmatic value of students learning English finally,the ESA theory put forward by Jeremy Harmer,a British English education expert is applied in English discourse teaching.He emphasized that Engage,Study and Activate are the basic conditions for successful language teaching.According to the teaching content and the students' need,teachers can flexibly adjust the order of the three elements,which can produce the three teaching modes to stimulate students' interest,to play students' principal role and to improve their language communication ability.During the teaching internship,the main problems were found in the current senior high English teaching by questionnaires,classroom observations and interviews such as students lacking of interest and low motivation in discourse learning,students low participation in discourse learning,students poor abilities of discourse comprehension and application.In response to the the above problems,the ESA theory is applied to senior high English discourse teachings.The study uses the input theory,output theory and discourse analysis theory as the theoretical guide and verify the following questions by using teaching experiment method:(1)Can the application of the ESA teaching theory improve students' interest and participation in discourse learning?(2)Can the application of the ESA theory improve students' abilities of discourse analysis,comprehension and application?After the implementation of ESA teaching mode,the research results show that students' interest and participation in discourse learning have been significantly improved and students' discourse comprehension and application abilities have also been slowly improved.However,in the actual application process of ESA teaching theory,there are still some obstacles such as language knowledge barriers,the influence of Chinese traditional face work,weak discourse awareness and lacking of pragmatic competence,which affects discourse teaching efficiency.Therefore,the teachers should pay attention to classroom speech act and save students' positive face,expand the input of corpus information,develop students' discourse analysis sensitivity and improve students' pragmatic competence.In conclusion,the flexible application of ESA theory in English discourse teaching can improve students' discourse awareness,arouse students' English learning interest and realize the pragmatic value of discourse teaching.