An Empirical Study Of Automaticity In English Reading Based On Multimedia-assisted Discourse Analysis Teaching Model

Reading,as an indispensable cognitive activity in human communication,has served as a primary part in the field of ESL teaching.However,in spite of deeply investigating the teaching of English reading at home and abroad,scant researches incorporate automaticity into the teaching of English reading in China context,especially in empirical researches.In essence,automatization can effectively and efficiently speed up the progression of processing with less attention and effort through a complex chain of mental operations.Thus,automaticity in English discourse reading is a significant research subject in second language acquisition or foreign language reading teaching.Meanwhile,with the expansion of colleges and universities enrollment,the traditional reading teaching model,which is still dominant in most Chinese classroom especially in Vocational and Technical College,is obviously hard to meet students' increasing requirements in English reading.Therefore,to change the stereotypical teaching model,the present study has explored the multimedia-assisted discourse analysis teaching model in English reading class and has conducted a comparative study between two different teaching models to figure out their influence on automaticity in discourse reading from six aspects for the purpose of further examining whether the improvement of automaticity can facilitate students' reading comprehension competence(referred to as RCC hereinafter).Based on the theory of Anderson's ACT*Model and Logan's instance theory,the author conducts an empirical experiment in two experimental groups from 64 non-English major sophomores in Guangxi Economic Vocational College.By adopting two different teaching methods to cultivate and enhance automaticity in discourse reading during 16 weeks' practice and training,the study aims at answering the following three questions:1)By adopting different teaching models,whether can 16 weeks' training of automaticity in English discourse reading generate the development of automaticity in two groups?If yes,which groups obtain higher improvement.2)Whether does the development of automaticity in English discourse reading have a facilitated effect upon students' reading comprehension in EG?3)If the development of automaticity in English reading can enhance students ' reading comprehension,what are the pedagogical implications we can obtain for English reading teaching?A multi-method approach underpinned the study by combining quantitative approach with qualitative approach,involving questionnaires,pre-test,post-test,and interviews.And through analyzing collected data by SPSS,findings from the empirical study revealed that with the help of multimedia technology,discourse analysis teaching model presented more effective and efficient effects on the process of cultivating automaticity in discourse reading.Furthermore,the positive correlation between automaticity and RCC had been proved,so that we could conclude the development of automaticity can facilitate students' performance in reading comprehension.In addition,the results of the study contributed to generate some pedagogical implications and practical suggestions for future researches in English reading teaching.