Application Of Discourse Periodicity Theory In College English Reading Instruction

As one of the four basic learning strategies in foreign language acquisition, reading skill isconsidered as to play an influential part in improving people’s comprehensive competence oflanguage application. For quite a long time, college English reading instruction has always beena research focus for scholars as well as college English teachers, but in the actual teachingpractice of college English reading instruction, students’reading proficiency is still notsatisfactory as expected. Therefore, it has already become a top research priority to improve thecurrent college English reading instruction situation at present.As a new try in college English reading instruction, the periodicity-based discourse analysisprovides a new train of think, contributing to the birth of the periodicity-based teaching approach,which is most probably a complete new method of text analysis in most scholars’eyes. Centeringon the developing route of textual information and the thematic structures of a text, the theory ofdiscourse periodicity plays the role of the theoretical basis of the periodicity-based teachingapproach, which aims to improve students’reading comprehension competence by guiding themto analyze the writing route and purpose of the author in an article. Fairly positive significance inimproving students’textual awareness is attached to the periodicity-based teaching approach.Therefore, through learning thematic structures, schematic features and cognitive models underthe guidance of this new teaching approach, students’reading ability and the actual readinginstruction can be expected to be improved to some degree.In order to give evidence of the feasibility of the new attempt and provide different thoughtsto improve the current college English reading instruction, this thesis explains the application ofthe theory of discourse periodicity in college English reading instruction in details. Firstly, theintroduction part, consisting of the research background, intention and significance of the presentresearch, is shown by the author. And then, the theoretical basis and the present researchachievements of theory of discourse periodicity are demonstrated, following which the majorpart in the thesis, the research methodology, is presented.Before the experiment, three hypotheses are put forward by the author to prove the validityof the thesis. 1. The application of theory of discourse periodicity in reading instruction willresult in a positive influence on students’reading achievements of the whole text. 2. The application of theory of discourse periodicity will improve student’s performance of usingcomprehensive reading strategies in their learning process. 3. The application of theory ofdiscourse periodicity will significantly promote students’learning autonomy.In order to substantiate the research objectives above, the author then conduct an empiricalstudy. The subjects in the experiment, 101 sophomores who are non-English majors, are chosenfrom two existing classes in Shandong University of Political Science and Law. One class istaken as the control group using traditional teaching method, the other the experimental groupcorrespondingly. The experimental group is guided under the periodicity-based teachingapproach. With the intent to testify the relevance between the periodicity-based teachingapproach and the improvement of students’reading ability, the control group is chosen to providecomparison for the experimental group in terms of students’changes in their reading proficiency.The time length of this teaching experiment is a term. With regard to the empirical studymethods, reading comprehension tests, interviews, questionnaires and class observation areapplied at different experimental stages. The pre-reading comprehension test and thepre-questionnaire are both conducted in the two groups before the experiment, while interviews,the post-questionnaire and class observation are given only in the experimental group.From the analysis of the data collected in the experiment by SPSS 15.0, it shows thatstudents in the experimental group get significant improvements in their reading performance aswell as the ability of applying comprehensive reading strategies, and they are able to grasp theinformation distribution and the macro-structure of a text. It also reveals that students in bothgroups performance better in understanding the fact-based information of a text, while studentsin the experimental group get a better result on indirect questions. Hereby it can be drawn thatstudents’reading comprehension level has been improved more obviously under the guidance ofthe periodicity-based teaching approach. At the same time, students’capability of autonomouslearning is enhanced. After being familiar with the procedures of analyzing a text under theperiodicity-based teaching approach, they are able to try analyzing a new text on their own,which will certainly bring a great deal of benefits to their future study life.Therefore, the research result indicates that the obvious improvement of students’readingability in the experimental group attributes to the application of discourse periodicity theory inreading instruction in class. In addition, there are some pedagogical implications in this research, such as developing students’reading strategies, the higher requirement of teacher’qualificationin applying the theory of discourse periodicity.The relative study on the application of theory of discourse periodicity in college Englishreading instruction is rare at present. What’s more, there has not been any relative empiricalstudy in this field until now. As a tentative attempt on the application of theory of discourseperiodicity, this research makes some beneficial achievements, presenting readers with detailinformation of the empirical study. Due to the limitations of the author’s academic knowledgeand other factors, this study is not that all-around, needing to get further investigations in thefuture. In a word, this research is expected to be beneficial for college English readinginstruction.