A Study On The Effective Application Of The Register Theory On The Critical Reading In The High School English Course

Register theory is one of the major theories of systemic functional grammar.According to the definition by the famous linguist Halliday,the situational factors that determine the linguistic features can be summarized into three variables: field,mode and tenor,and these three variables work together to determine the register.Halliday?s register theory reveals different forms of language change caused by changes in context,which opens up a new perspective for reading teaching research.According to the register theory,the register has the function of reflecting culture and prediction.Therefore,according to the characteristics of the register,teaching enables students to learn the cultural characteristics of the language and its ideographic methods,accelerates and deepens the understanding of the text,and thus improves the capability of reading comprehension.The thesis starts with the register theory and combines the critical teaching pattern to explore its guidance to the English reading teaching in high schools.The following are the three research questions:(1)What major problems do the students have in reading comprehension?(2)How are the register theory and critical reading mode applied to high school English reading class?(3)What is the influence of the application of critical reading teaching mode based on register theory on students? reading level?In order to smoothly carry out the research,the author selects 90 students of Grade 2 from one senior high school in Gaizhou,Liaoning province.There are 45 students in both experimental class and controlled class.The author finds that English reading levels of the two classes are almost the same according to the research results of pre-test.The controlled class uses the traditional teaching model in reading teaching,while the experimental class adopts critical reading model based on the register theory.In terms of data collection,this paper mainly uses questionnaire,interview and reading comprehension tests.Through the qualitative analysis of the two tests before and after the experiment by SPSS22.0 statistical software,the following conclusions are drawn: Firstly,the students understand the reading materials only at the superficial level,mainly covering the vocabulary,grammar and sentence patterns.They can?t analyze the discourse on a whole to explore the deep meaning of the discourse.The cultivation of discourse appreciation and the teaching of cultural background knowledge for students are inadequate,leading to their less interest in reading.Secondly,from the perspective of the discourse field,the themes of the articles are discussed by analyzing the vocabulary and syntax in the high school English reading materials.From the perspective of the discourse tenor,the use of language and the choice of tone are analyzed to reveal the relationship between characters in the material and the formality of language use;from the perspective of discourse mode,it is analyzed how the author elaborates on the topic,whether it is formal or informal.Besides the analysis of cultural background knowledge is combined so that the register theory and critical reading mode can be well applied in the high school English reading class.Thirdly,the post-test scores of the experimental class are significantly higher than the post-test scores of the control class,which indicates that the high school English critical reading teaching mode based on the register theory can significantly improve the learners? reading level.This experimental research aims to explore the influence of critical reading teaching mode based on register theory on the English reading level of high school students.The significance of this research lies in:(1)Based on the register theory,it truly reflects the existing problems that the testees have in English reading comprehension to provide a more effective reading strategy for the testees.(2)The research results help teachers to improve the awareness of the language field and critical reading teaching mode.(3)This paper opens up ideas for the study of high school reading teaching mode.