An Empirical Study On The Teaching Of English Reading In Senior High School From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

English reading is supposed to be one of the most important skills in Englishlearning in senior high school. In current English teaching in senior high school, thetraditional teaching method of English reading based on grammar-translation is stillprevailing. The traditional teaching approach mainly focuses on the instruction of newwords, grammar and language points, but it neglects to cultivate students· Englishreading proficiency. Under this approach, students can increase their quantity ofvocabulary and make sentences without mistakes of grammar. However, theefficiency of their English reading is not obviously improved.For many years, experts and scholars at home and abroad have been studyingteaching of English reading from different perspectives and have made someachievements in this field. In the recent decades, some scholars tend to study teachingof English reading from cognitive pragmatics perspective and try to apply one of thecognitive pragmatics theories, Relevance Theory, to teaching of English reading,which has given rise to some heartening fruits. However, having consulted therelevant literature, the author found that most researches on the application ofRelevance Theory to teaching of English reading were based on the college level andrarely associated with senior high school field.Given the above issues and the current status, this thesis attempts to make anempirical study to explore whether the application of Relevance Theory to teaching ofEnglish reading is practical in senior high school. To be more specific, the followingtwo research questions are put forward in this thesis:(1) Can Relevance-theoretic reading approach improve senior high schoolstudents·English reading proficiency?(2) Can Relevance-theoretic reading approach produce beneficial effect on seniorhigh school students·awareness of using reading strategies in English reading?Firstly, the thesis makes a review on the studies of English reading, and the studies of English reading on the basis of Relevance Theory both abroad and at home.Secondly, it expatiates on the definition and the working mechanism of RelevanceTheory, analyses its theoretical application to English reading.And then, an empirical study which lasts for one semester is conducted. Thesubjects are81students of two natural classes (one is control class and the other isexperimental class) in Grade1from Guangzhou No.17Senior High School. Thestudents in experimental class are taught in the Relevance-theoretic reading approach,while the students in control class are taught in the traditional reading approach. Testsof English reading proficiency and questionnaires of using reading strategies arecarried out in the experiment. Pre-test of reading proficiency and pre-questionnaire ofusing reading strategies are taken at the beginning of the experiment while thepost-test and post-questionnaire are carried out at the end of the experiment for twoclasses. After data collection, the author uses the Independent Samples Test of SPSS(17.0) to analyze the results. The results of pre-test and post-test demonstrate thatRelevance-theoretic reading approach can improve senior high school students·English reading proficiency. The results of pre-questionnaire and post-questionnairereflect that Relevance-theoretic reading approach can produce beneficial effect onsenior high school students·awareness of using reading strategies in English reading.Finally, the major findings are presented and some pedagogical implications forfurther study are put forward. Meanwhile, the limitations of this research andsuggestions for further research are pointed out.