A Study On The Application Of The Discourse Cohesion Theory In Junior High School English Reading Teaching

With the reform of the new curriculum standards,the emphasis of English teaching in junior high school has gradually changed,which puts forward higher requirements for foreign language teaching in China.However,there are quite many problems existing in the English reading teaching in Zhangjiakou No.9 Middle School,such as the old teaching ideas,the rigid teaching contents,the outdated teaching methods and so on.These problems lead to a poor English reading teaching effect,a low enthusiasm in students' English reading learning,and their significantly dominate attitude of the tool and evaluation toward English reading learning.Thus,the reform of English reading teaching in middle school is urgently needed.Halliday and Hasan Firstly proposed the basic concepts and realization means of discourse systematically in their book named Cohesion in English.According to Halliday and Hasan,the whole text is made up of many semantic relations,and the cohesion can be divided into grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion.Compared with the traditional reading teaching strategies,cohesion oriented reading teaching strategies have unique advantages in cultivating the reading abilities of students and the ability to use language comprehensively.Based on the three-month-research conducted on the 80 students from Class 9 and Class 10 Grade 8 Zhangjiakou No.9 Middle School through the help of questionnaires,tests and interviews,the thesis aimed at exploring some cohesion oriented reading teaching strategies that are beneficial to English reading teaching in junior high school and studying the specific changes of English reading attitude of junior high school students based on this theory.Finally,the author found that the introduction of some discourse concepts and its implementation means can effectively help the students understand and grasp the article from the perspective of the whole,which not only provided some cohesion oriented strategies to English reading teaching,but also can help students to establish positive reading attitude by reducing the tool tendency attitude and changing it to an emotional one to improve the effect of English reading teaching and students' English reading ability.