An Experimental Study Of The Effect Of English Reading Teaching Based On Idealized Cognitive Model In Senior High School

Reading plays a significant role in English learning,so reading teaching has always been the key point of English teaching.Although domestic and foreign scholars have made deep researches on reading teaching from different perspectives and foreign language teachers have also spent great efforts on reading teaching,the current reading teaching results are far from satisfaction.More studies on this issue are needed.With the development of cognitive linguistics,some of its theories have been employed to study reading teaching,such as schema theory,relevance theory,metaphor and so on.Idealized cognitive model(ICM),an essential theory of cognitive linguistics,is first proposed by Lakoff in 1987.The ideas of idealized cognitive model come from the theoretical achievements of some linguists.This study attempts to apply idealized cognitive model to probe into English reading teaching.A new teaching approach is formulated for the reading discourse analysis and other issues.Two specific questions are to be answered: 1)Can English reading teaching based on idealized cognitive model improve high school students' English reading proficiency?2)Can English reading teaching based on idealized cognitive model increase high school students' interest in English reading?The participants of this thesis come from two parallel classes of Dongjiang Middle School in Heyuan.85 senior two students take part in the experiment.42 students are in the control group(CG)while 43 students are in the experimental group(EG).The teaching experiment lasts for 10 weeks.The two groups use the same teaching material but different teaching approaches.The ICM approach is adopted in EG.Specifically,the purpose of pre-reading is to make full use of the ICM knowledge to predict the text content.The purpose of while-reading is to make full use of the ICM knowledge to deal with the text information.And the purpose of post-reading is to make full use of the ICM knowledge to consolidate what students have learned.For CG,the traditional reading teaching method is still used.The instruments employed in this research are the English reading proficiency tests,the questionnaires and the interviews.The pre-test and the pre-questionnaire are given to the participants of EGand CG before teaching intervention while the post-test and the post-questionnaire are conducted in EG and CG after the experiment.Meanwhile,an interview is conducted in EG after the experiment,and 6 students are randomly selected as interviewees.The methods of quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis are used to analyze the reading proficiency tests,the questionnaires and the interviews.Results indicate that students in the experimental group and the control group have significant difference in English reading proficiency and English reading interest after teaching intervention.It can be concluded that the ICM approach can improve high school students' English reading proficiency and increase their English reading interest.This study mainly produces three implications for English reading instruction in senior high school.Firstly,teachers should emphasize the dominant position of students by making full use of students' ICM knowledge to comprehend the text.Secondly,teachers are supposed to provide relevant cognitive world knowledge to enrich students' ICM knowledge.Thirdly,teachers should pay special attention to the discourse analysis,and guide students to use their ICM knowledge to master the text structure and understand the connections in the text.