Application Of Discourse Cohesion Theory To English Reading Teaching In Senior Middle School

According to the English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School(2017Version),English reading learning is not only mastering basic grammar knowledge,but also establishing a connection between new and old knowledge,and understanding the main content and writing intention based on the text type and its characteristics.Students are supposed to understand the internal cohesion between paragraphs or sentences based on conjunctions,pronouns and so on.Textual cohesion refers to the use of lexical cohesion and grammatical cohesive in discourse to form a coherent text,which can appear between sentences or within sentences.At present,the application of textual cohesion in high school reading teaching is uncommon,and there is no fixed teaching model.This thesis attempts to use cohesive devices based on discourse cohesion theory to guide reading teaching,and combines various research methods such as questionnaires,experiments,and interviews to learn about the current reading situation of high school students.The purpose is to solve the following questions:After the application of discourse cohesion theory to high school English reading teaching,(1)What are the effects on the use of reading strategies?(2)What are the effects on students’ reading ability? Among the different testing items,which types of questions are more influenced by discourse cohesion theory in scores?In order to solve these problems,this thesis selects two classes from Liaodongwan High School in Panjin City as the research objects,divided into an experimental class of class 3 and a control class of class 21.Under the guidance of discourse cohesion theory,a 4-month(September 2020-December 2020)reading teaching activity is implemented.Firstly,a questionnaire is designed to investigate the English reading situation in two classes and to find out the students’ familiarity with textual cohesion.At the same time,a reading test is conducted in the experimental class and the control class to examine whether there is any significant difference between the reading levels of the two classes.In the teaching experiment,the experimental class adopts a combination of cohesion devices and task-based teaching method,while the control class only adopts task-based teaching mode,and then the post-test is administered after four months of teaching activities.The author uses SPSS software to compare the test results and analyzes the scoring rates of different types of questions.Finally,the author uses interviews to understand students’ views on discourse cohesion.The results of the above experiments are as follows:(1)The application of discourse cohesion theory in teaching upgrades students’ reading strategies.Students consciously search for words that indicate cohesive devices such as reference,substitution,ellipsis,and conjunction when they are reading.The results of the post-questionnaire survey show that the majority of students in the experimental class chooses to believe that they can master the cohesive relationships in the discourse,but only 10-20% students of the control class believe that.(2)The application of discourse cohesion theory in teaching significantly improves students’ reading ability.The reason is that students better grasp cohesive devices and are more active in the classes.After the experiment,students tend to pay more attention to the structure of the text and the correlation between sentences and paragraphs.Students are more focused when they finish the reading tasks.From the perspective of students’ scores in different testing items,the correctness of identification questions increases from 65.25%to 89.17%.The correctness of inference questions increases from 31.67% to 56.875%.The correctness of synthesis questions increases from 57.5% to 64.17%.The correctness of recognition of words questions increases from 60% to 67.5%.The data shows that there is obvious increase in the correctness of the four types of questions.There is the highest increase in inference questions,and then identification questions,and then recognition of words questions.The increase in synthesis questions is the lowest.