College English Reading Teaching Based On Relevance Theory

Reading is the one of the most important ways of obtaining and exchanging information, and is also a potential communicative ability of readers. Reading is a very complicated psychological and cognitive process, in which the writer conveys his intensions, thinking and feelings in a written form, while the reader has to understand the author's real attention hidden behind the language marks with recognition, relevance and inference. This kind of communication is a special communicative form between the writer and the reader because it is not a face-to-face process, which increases the difficulty to get the true meaning of the author's.Among the four basic foreign language acquisition skills, reading plays a very important part, and English reading teaching is also an important component of language instruction. With the deepening of college English reform, teaching system has changed greatly, shifting from the examination-oriented modeL to application-oriented mode. Therefore, traditional reading teaching models, which focus on grammatical and lexical learning, can not meet the need and development of college English reading teaching.Based on the above, this paper analyzes the nature of reading and reading comprehension, reviews English reading models which affect English reading greatly. After stressing these influences, their limitations are pointed out. Then the pedagogical implications of the Relevance Theory are explored. From the perspective of Relevance Theory, reading comprehension is an ostensive-inferential process. For one thing, the writer shows his or her ideas by a set of linguistic symbols; for another thing, the reader comprehends the writer's real intension by inferring the optimal relevance.Therefore, on the basis of Relevance Theory, this thesis illustrates the Relevance Theory-based reading model, discusses its specific point, and applies it into teaching practices. In order to examine this new model, a study is undertaken to confirm whether the Relevance Theory-based model is effective in teaching of English reading. The data are obtained through reading comprehension tests (pre-test and post-test). Two classes in Grade 2009, which are selected at random from the College of Mathematics in Chongqing Normal University, are involved in this study. One is the control class and the other is the experimental class. The traditional reading teaching approach is used in the control class and the Relevance Theory-based reading approach is used in the experimental class. After the eighteen-week experiment, the test scores of the experimental class improve a lot in comparison with that of the control class. Meanwhile, the students'attitude of English reading in the experimental class is switching from passivity to initiative.Finally, this paper draws a conclusion that the Relevance Theory-based reading model under the guidance of the relevance theory is effective in reading teaching of college English. It can develop students'ability of pragmatic inference,activate students'interest and greatly improve their reading ability.