| In English learning, as a main source of language input and accumulation, reading plays an important role. However, in recent years, increasingly more English educators tend to emphasize the importance of speaking and listening, which results in the neglect of the training of the students' reading ability. Actually, the reason why English is so important is not merely because it is a global language but because it is a language of science, technology and advanced research, which means it demands effective reading ability more than any other skills in the learning process. Especially with the rapid development of science and technology, the demand on reading ability is even greater. In the meantime, most English learners find great difficulty in their reading. After many years of learning the language, most students perform badly in the reading section in English tests which usually takes up 30-40% of the total score.At present, the teaching of English reading in China's colleges is largely carried out in the English classes in which English texts are presented and explained. So there are actually no English reading classes in the strict sense. Based on the cohesion theory of discourse analysis, the thesis attempts to probe the possibility and feasibility of applying the theory of discourse analysis into the teaching of English reading in college by analyzing both English and Chinese written texts. Discourse analysis is now widely used in a variety of academic departments and disciplines. It is a scientific method which is used to examine aspects of the structure and function of language in use. One of its basic concepts, cohesion which studies how the parts of text are linked together, is considered as an important standard to distinguish a written text or a conversation from a random list of sentences. By introducing the theory of discourse analysis, particularly cohesion theory to the college students in English classes, teachers may help to improve the students' reading ability by increasing their knowledge of the nature of texts, which may solve the present reading problem that is caused by the lack of sufficient practice time in English classes.The thesis consists of six parts. The first part introduces the background to the study, in which the significance and objectives of the study are also stated. This part analyzes the important status of reading in language learning and points out the major problem in the present teaching of English reading, which is mainly caused by the lack of sufficient training time of reading in classes.The second part describes the major theory in reading comprehension and some important concepts in discourse analysis.The third part introduces the theoretical basis of the thesis—cohesion theory, and illustrates each point by giving examples largely from data gathered. Cohesion is one of the most important features of being a text, the study of which includes grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion.The fourth part is the presentation of the comparative study of English and Chinese grammatical and lexical cohesion, in which both differences and similarities of the two languages in cohesive devices are analyzed and discussed. The data used in this part are taken from TOEFL and HSK of recent years, which includes altogether 100 passages.The fifth part analyzes the possibility and feasibility of introducing cohesion theory into English classes in college by providing a number of instructional techniques that are useful for teaching English reading.The last part is the conclusion which summarizes the whole thesis. It points out the significance of introducing cohesion theory into the college English classes and also lists the limitations of the present research. |
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