Application Of Discourse Analysis To English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

It has been widely acknowledged that reading plays a very significant role in developing students’comprehensive competence of language. Reading is the main channel for students to gain informationduring their English learning and also the most efficient and important way of language input. It can helpboth develop students’ linguistic competence and cultivate their communicative competence. Therefore, theteaching of reading occupies an important position in the high school English teaching. How to teachreading effectively has drawn great attention of English teachers at present.The New National English Curricula Standard for Senior High School implemented in2003demandsthat English teaching should aim at developing students’ integrating skills in using language. According tothe goals set by the English Curricula Standard for senior high school students, while reading, studentsshould have a higher level of reading comprehension which needs them to be able to have a deepunderstanding of the author’s viewpoints and attitudes depending on the structure and context of adiscourse. But the traditional English reading teaching in senior high school just concentrated on thecultivation and accumulation of language knowledge, spending much time on explanation of words,grammar and sentence structures. It ignored the comprehension of discourse as a whole. As a result,students are incompetent at understanding of the whole discourse. It’s obvious that such a teaching modecan’t help students get the purpose of improving their linguistic competence. Thus, as a new method,discourse analysis teaching mode was advocated in English reading teaching, which can help students graspthe theme of the discourse as a whole. Fortunately, there are rich discourse materials in the present SeniorEnglish books, which is beneficial for teachers to use the discourse analysis teaching method, to stimulatestudents’ interest in English learning and enrich their knowledge, thus improve students’ competence inusing language.This thesis aims to verify that the application of discourse analysis theory in reading teaching canlargely enhance students’ discourse awareness and competence, improve students’ reading habits and thuspromote their reading ability effectively. The author compiles a questionnaire combined with the one-term’sexperiment study to testify the efficiency of discourse analysis teaching mode in improving students’reading habits and promoting their reading competence. This thesis aims to search an effective way ofdiscourse analysis teaching to remedy the deficiency of the traditional English reading teaching.This thesis is divided into six parts. The first part introduces the importance and problems of English reading teaching at present. According to the analysis of current situation in the college entranceexamination and the requirement of The New National English Curricula Standard for senior high schools,the author finally proposes the application of discourse analysis theory in English reading teaching toimprove students’ ability of reading comprehension. The second part makes a literature review of theresearches on reading teaching from different perspectives, elaborates on studies of the application ofdiscourse analysis theories in reading teaching, and makes a summary at last. The third part focuses on thetheoretical framework of discourse and discourse analysis. It presents the definition of discourse anddiscourse analysis and elaborates on the main contents of discourse analysis: cohesion, coherence and genreanalysis. Besides, this thesis also explores the three-stage framework of discourse analysis in readingteaching. The fourth part is the research methodology. The fifth part is the results of the experiment and thediscussion o the results. The sixth part is the conclusion of this thesis: the application of discourse analysisin English reading teaching can help the senior students improve their English reading habits as well astheir reading competence. Finally, the author makes conclusion of the study, points out the limitations ofthis study, and puts forward some suggestions for further study of the subject.