An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of Textual Cohesion On Improving College English Reading Comprehension For Non-English Majors

Reading, as the major channel to get information and knowledge, is one of theimportant language skills. Besides, it has drawn enough attention in the field of Englishteaching. However, most Chinese college students’ reading ability is still not satisfactory,especially those concerning the overall understanding of the passage. Therefore, it isnecessary to explore an effective teaching method to improve college students’ readingability from the perspective of discourse.During the past thirty years, textual linguistics has got a rapid development.Meanwhile, the focus of research on college English reading comprehension has shiftedfrom the study of words and grammar to that of the overall texts. As the majorcomponent of textual linguistics, cohesion theory is an important factor to understand thewhole texts. In1976, Halliday and Hasan published the book Cohesion in English, inwhich they introduced the concept and devices of cohesion at the first time. Since thepublication of this book, cohesion theory has attracted wide attention of linguists at homeand abroad. The study of cohesion theory has provided a new perspective for the teachingof English reading.This research intends to examine the effect of the application of cohesion theory onnon-English majors’ English reading ability. The present study employs an empiricalmethod to achieve this research objective. The subjects involved are117sophomores,who are studying in two natural classes of Yan’an university, one as the control classwhile the other as the experimental class. The study is divided into three phases. First ofall, a questionnaire was conducted for the two classes in order to know about the students’ awareness as well as ability to use cohesive devices in English readingcomprehension. Then it was a3-month teaching experiment. In the control class, Englishreading was taught in the usual way, which focuses on the language points. In theexperimental class, the author of this thesis used cohesion theory into the practicalteaching of English reading and gave some specific reading training to the students tocultivate them to recognize and analyze different kinds of cohesive devices in the text, soas to make them grasp the logical relations and coherent meanings between sentences andparagraphs. At last, an interview was conducted for the students in the experimental classto know about their opinions and attitudes towards the teaching method based oncohesion theory.According to the statistical data, the major findings of this study are as follows:college non-English majors have a week awareness of textual cohesion, and they fail toemploy cohesive devices to facilitate comprehension in English reading. In addition, theemployment of cohesion theory to the teaching of English reading can evidently improvenon-English majors’ reading ability. This teaching method can not only help studentsgrasp the main idea of the whole text and improve their reading comprehension, but alsohelp them develop some good reading habits and reading skills. Besides, this teachingmethod aroused students’ interest and self-confidence in English reading.As last, according to the findings of this study, the author brings forward somepedagogical implications for the teaching of college English reading from the perspectiveof cohesion theory. At the same time, the author also provided the limitations andsuggestions for future related researches.