Cohesion And Coherence Applied To English Reading Teaching For Junior Middle School

In China, reading is the most important skill among the four basic language skills-—listening, speaking, reading and writing. L2 reading ability, particular with English as the L2, is already in great demand as English continues to spread, not only as a global language but also as the language of science, technology and advanced research. Recently, more and more teachers have realized the important role of reading in English language teaching and they are trying their best to improve their teaching methods in reading class. With their great efforts, various good teaching methods have appeared, such as, the schema approach, the task-based approach, which can improve students reading ability more or less. However, it is still difficult for students to catch the main idea, master the complete discourse and analyze the purpose of the author. In this case, the author of this thesis tries to explore a more effective teaching in junior school, that is, cohesion and coherence theory applied to English reading. An awareness of cohesion and coherence in all text is a very important skill for students to develop.This thesis reports an experimental study of cohesion and coherence to English reading in junior middle school. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of reading ability based on the theory. The research questions explored in this thesis are as follows:First, does the experiment enhance EFL junior students'ability?Second, if so, how is the effectiveness of the theory related to students'reading ability. The thesis consists of four chapters. In chapter one, in order to have a clear understanding of the reading research , the author gives an overview of reading research at home and abroad, then introduces the definition of reading, reading purposes and the relation between reading, cohesion and coherence theory .In chapter two, starting from the basic concepts of cohesion and coherence, the author expounds the main contents of the theory, focusing on cohesive devices.In chapter three, with specific texts in the textbook of junior middle school and some passages from the examination paper as materials, the author explains the application of the theory in English reading teaching. At last, an example of using theory to teaching is given.Chapter four provides a training experiment on how to help students improve their reading ability from theory aspect. The subject consists of 62 junior one middle school students from two parallel classes of Jinling Junior Middle School in Zibo. In the control class, traditional teaching method was applied. While in the experimental class, reading was conducted regularly with cohesion and coherence theory for about three months study. Two test papers are used to measure the subjects reading performance, of which, the mid-term exam paper is used as the pre-test paper and the final-term exam paper as the post-test one. The results are compared to examine the effects of the theory by T-test in SPSS11.5.The study has reached the following conclusion: first, the experiment really improved junior middle school students'reading ability. Second, it has a limited effectiveness of the theory related to students'reading ability. At the same time, it trained the students how to study by reading.Based on this study, some pedagogical implications were drawn: the results prove that the application of cohesion and coherence in English reading teaching can help students to improve their reading comprehension and meanwhile cultivate the ability of learning by reading.Besides, the author also presents a conclusion which includes summary of the study, the limitation of the study and some suggestions for further study.