On Relevance Theory And English Class

The thesis confines the discussion on relevance theory and its application to English class and some other theories of discourse analysis may occasionally be touched upon.Dating back to the twenty years' history of the research on the discourse analysis, we find that discourse analysis is concerned with a target language in use. It's a way of describing and understanding how language is used. And relevance theory, one of the most significant theories of discourse analysis, is realized a guidance of English class which focuses on the notions of assumption, context, relevant, processing effort and cognitive effect etc.. especially the optimal relevance and understanding give us a direction of improving our English class. On the view of cognition, teaching is a cognition and communication process. Whether the teacher can arouse the students' interest and attention decides the efficiency of a class. Based on the relevance theory that decides on the fact that the hearer generally has to exert larger processing effort and get greater cognitive effect to find out optimal relevance, the thesis analyzes the discourse in an English teaching class, including the utterance of teacher and the understanding of student, discusses the application of the relevance theory to English class to find when it is relevant between teachers and students, students and students, students and teaching materials and other factors which may occur in class. Teachers are encouraged to conduct the ask-answer activity in such an restricted circumstance and analyze the cognitive relevance to seek the optimal relevance instead of the maximization relevance. The thesis is to promote the interaction, to foster the creativity of the students, to find out teaching strategies which are to be more suitable, more flexible and more creative, and to improve the affectivity of English teaching in class.