A Discourse-Analysis-Based Approach To Teaching Reading In Junior Middle Schools

Reading is an important and effective way for people to get more input from the external world.Also,reading is one of the four language skills,which plays a vital role in learning a new language.With the development of our society,the demand for English reading ability has become higher and higher,it is urgent and necessary to find out some effective and useful method of teaching English reading.The traditional grammar-translation method can no longer meet people's needs for reading.As a result,some new and modern teaching methods have been developed.One of them is the discourse-analysis-based approach.Based on the cognitive theory,the schema theory and the context theory,this approach pays more attention to the discourse analysis.It teaches English reading from both the macro and micro points of view,which include an analysis of genre,discourse pattern,context of a passage,and cohesion and coherence between sentences.This thesis aims to verify the effectiveness of the discourse-analysis-based approach through these research questions: “Can discourse-analysis-based approach improve junior middle school students' performance in reading ?” and “Can discourse-analysis-based approach improve the performance of high achievers and low achievers alike? Why?” To answer the above questions,the author did an experiment,conducted surveys and gave an interview.The participants are 72 Grade 8students from two classes in the Tianlin Three middle school,and they are divided into the experimental class and the control class.The whole experiment lasts eight weeks from 1 September 2019 to 1 December 2019.The teaching material is the same textbook of the Oxford version.In the experimental class,the new discourse-analysis-based approach is adopted while in the control class,the traditional grammar-translation method is used.In order to get more accurate data,a series of preparations and procedures are made by the author,including two questionnaires,two tests and an interview.All the data collected by the author are analyzed by theSPSS 22.0.The results of this twelve-week long empirical study show that 1)The discourse-analysis-based approach can improve junior middle school students' performance in reading;2)Both high achievers and low achievers can benefit from this approach,but in different aspects.The high achievers have mastered more useful and specific skills in analyzing discourse in the reading process,while the low achievers have acquired some basic knowledge and felt more confident.Therefore,the discourse-analysis-based approach is successful.