A Study Of The Application Of The Relevance Theory To English Reading Teaching In Middle School

English reading is an important way to get information for Chinese students and it is the foundation of their English skills.With the development of the times and the change of the life concept of people,the status of English reading is becoming more and more important.English reading is regarded as one of the most important parts of English learning.In current English teaching of middle school,some English teachers still adopt the traditional teaching method based on grammar-translation to teach English reading.The traditional teaching method pays more attention to the explanation of language points like new words in the texts,and the understanding of fixed phrases and sentences which contain its meaning and other structures.There is no doubt that students can enlarge their quantity of vocabulary and know more about the grammar knowledge with fewer grammar mistakes.At the same time,it can't make for the improvement of English reading proficiency.What make matters worse,they only focus on the independent words and sentences instead of the whole passage.Sperber and Wilson firstly published their work Relevance: Communication and Cognition in 1986 and after that the communicative cognition theory is studied in the field of linguistics.With the deepening of study,the relevance theory was applied to many other fields such as psychology,literature,linguistics and translation.The relevance theory gives people enlightenment to explore the human communication from the point of cognition.Based on the relevance theory,the author holds the opinion that reading is a communication process between the readers and writers.Therefore,the author tries to discuss the application of the relevance theory to the English reading teaching of middle school and put forward some useful suggestions to improve students' reading abilities.In the framework of relevance theory,there are three main aspects related to reading.First,communication is an ostensive-inferential process.And reading is a way for writer to express his own opinion,so reading is a communicative process between the reader and author.Secondly,reading is a process of seeking optimal relevance.In the process of reading,the reader always wants to understand the intention of author with the least effort.Certainly,successful reading should rely on certain cognitive contexts.Readers try to infer the implicit meanings from literal meanings.It can be seen that the relevance theory can help the reader to understand the specific context and intention of author during the process of reading.This thesis aims to explore guiding significance and practical value of the relevance theory to English reading teaching in middle school through the empirical research.The author mainly studies three questions,1)What are the main factors that influence students' English reading ability? 2)How is students' interest in English reading improved with the guidance of relevance theory? 3)How is students' English reading ability improved with the guidance of relevance theory?With the purpose of testing the result,the author chooses two classes from Jingkai Middle School.One is chosen as experimental class(EC),and the other is control class(CC).The author adopted the school entrance examination of Jingkai Middle School as the pre-test and carried out a three-month experimental teaching.The overall reading level of these two classes was almost the same.The author designed teaching procedures based on the planned strategies to the experimental class.At last,the author used SPSS19.0 software to analyze the data and test the effectiveness of teaching method.The analysis of the teaching experiment proves that it is effective for English teachers to apply the teaching method based on the relevance theory to the English reading of middle school.The application of the English reading teaching mode under the guidance of relevance theory can make for the improvement of students' reading abilities.What's more,it also shows positive change of students' interest and attitude.For instance,the teacher can offer cognitive contexts including backgroundknowledge,language knowledge,reading strategies under the guidance of relevance theory.As a result,it can give rise to the interest of students and promote the change of their negative attitude toward English.In a word,reading teaching method based on the relevance theory is helpful to the improvement of students' English reading ability.The thesis contains six parts.The first chapter presents a brief introduction to the background,significance,the research questions and the purpose of the research.The second chapter is the literature review.It mainly contains four parts which are related studies on English reading,related studies on relevance theory abroad and at home,related studies on the application of the relevance theory to English reading and related studies on the application of the relevance to English reading teaching in middle school.The third chapter is theoretical foundation which introduces the guiding theory of this study,namely relevance theory as well as its main content.The fourth chapter introduces the research design and there are four parts which are research purpose,research subjects,research instruments,research procedures and a sample teaching plan of the relevance theory respectively.The fifth part is the data analysis of the research results.This part mainly analyzes the CC and EC's scores of pre-test,post-test,pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire.In the last chapter of the thesis,the author makes a conclusion,and it includes the major findings,the implication of this research and suggestions for further studies.