The Positive Effects Of Discourse Markers On The Teaching Of English Reading In High Schools

The New English Curriculum for Senior High Schools(Experiment) (The Ministry of Education of PRC 2003) pays more attention to the development of students' comprehensive ability,and puts forward a higher request to high school students' reading ability.In recent years,a lot of domestic and international linguists have carried out a large number of studies concerning such issues as the meaning,purposes,processes, strategies and techniques of reading.In our country many English teachers have also made a lot of beneficial attempts in the teaching of reading,but they have not done enough research on reading teaching for high school students.This thesis tries to use the research results of the textual linguistic theory,specifically the discourse marker theory,to inquiry into the teaching of reading in high schools to raise students' English reading ability.Reading is an interactive process,which is regarded as a complex cognitive activity.Both the text and the readers are the essential factors in reading comprehension.The readers can understand the structure and the meaning of the text according to discourse markers in the text.Discourse markers refer to those words that signal the logical relationships and contribute to the coherence of discourse in a text. Discourse markers are one of the important features of a text.With the rise of text analysis,many linguists have become interested in the functions of discourse markers in reading comprehension.Researches conducted abroad have suggested that discourse markers have positive impacts on reading comprehension and readers' better knowledge of discourse markers can enable them to have a better understanding about the text structure and the meaning of the text. However,little empirical research has been done in this aspect in China. Therefore,this thesis focuses on the effects of discourse markers on reading comprehension of senior students in China and tries to provide an efficient strategy of reading by means of discourse markers.As an empirical research,it obtained data from the results of a questionnaire,two interviews and two reading tests.The subjects were 100 first-year Chinese students in the senior school.They were divided into an experimental class and a control class,each of which had 50 students.In collecting data,the subjects were first asked to fill in a questionnaire form about the knowledge of discourse markers and reading strategies,an interview was given and a reading test was done. This research investigated discourse markers' effects on the teaching of English reading.It discussed questions as follows:a) What is the general situation of senior students' knowledge of discourse markers?b) What is the relationship between students' knowledge of discourse markers as reading strategies and reading comprehension?c) Can we improve senior students' reading ability by teaching students discourse markers as reading strategies?Then the experimental class received two terms' training of discourse markers in reading.At the end of the second term,the second interview was given and the second reading test was done.Finally,the data in the above-mentioned aspects were statistically analyzed by employing the descriptive statistics,Pearson correlation coefficient and a t-test.The results suggested that discourse markers had great effects on reading comprehension.The students who mastered discourse markers scored higher in reading tests.The training of discourse markers as reading strategies resulted in better reading comprehension.A conclusion was thus reached that we improved senior students' reading ability by teaching them discourse markers as reading strategies.It was also suggested that discourse markers as reading strategies be paid more attention to and be widely utilized in the teaching of English reading so as to help students comprehend texts better.