Chapter One Introduction
1.1Aims of the study
With the development of social economy, the increase in communication with othercountries, university students are required to have higher English abilities. Although someprogress has been made in teaching College English, teachers should still explore newteaching methods to meet the need of the teaching syllabus of College English.English curriculum requirement of College English teaching (2000,1) clearly made twodemands: On the average level, it is required that university students understand articles fromdomestic newspaper or magazines in English, grasp main idea, main facts and related detailsof the reading material, apply effective reading skills and the reading speed is more than 70words per minute. On the higher level, it is required that university students understandarticles from newspaper or magazines from English-speaking countries, correctly grasp mainidea, main facts and related details of the reading material, properly use reading skills such asskimming, scanning, the reading speed is over 80 words per minute. Recently, both CET-4and CET-6 have promoted much higher requirements in the way of students’ readingcomprehension. Both of the two tests attach much more importance to checking students’discourse reading ability, such as the ability of discourse analysis, the ability of reasonablejudgment, the ability of logical inference and so on. Meanwhile both of the two tests alsomake much higher requirements in the way of students’ reading speed, the readingvocabulary being larger and larger every year.
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1.2Significance of the study
Recently, a lot of teachers admit the fact that the traditional English teaching methodcan’t achieve the real goal of reading teaching. Teachers can see the unsatisfactory result thatstudents' reading capacity can’t meet requirements of society. How to improve students’reading ability, especially, discourse reading ability has been an urgent problem that facescollege English teachers. First of all, teachers have to learn theories about linguistics andreading teaching. The theory of discourse analysis is very important and useful to readingteaching. The systemic functional grammar, founded by M.A.K. Halliday is his theoretic tool.The systemic functional grammar has provided discourse analysis with theoretic framework.Halliday’s (1994) functional linguistics puts special emphasis on social function andmetafunction of language. Seen from functional perspective, discourse analysis is to studycommutative language and involves the relationship between language and its context. TheEnglish reading teaching based on theories of the systemic functional grammar has beenproved effective. In combination with reading material, teachers properly teach studentstheories of the systemic functional grammar. In this way, both teachers and students get abetter understanding of theories of discourse analysis. On the second place, students canpromote their ability of analyzing and solving problems through this teaching approach.While teaching, students are the center of teaching; teachers just guide them to learn readingmaterial. Finally, the author has tried to explore the new teaching model of college Englishreading. The author has tested the effect of the teaching model to improve students’ discoursereading ability by applying it to college intensive reading course. The author also designs theteaching procedures and appraises students’ ability by test papers of CET-4. The research isjust an experiment and there are some limitations. But it has attained its basic aims, whichmay be beneficial to teaching college English reading.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Overseas research review of reading
Scholars have been carrying out researches into college English reading teaching. All theresearches are built on the development of theories that lead teaching English reading as aforeign language (EFL). Therefore, it is necessary for English teachers to know about thehistory and development of theories about English reading as a foreign or second language.Reading is the process of forming understanding by the interaction among theinformation offered by the writer, the context of the reading material, and readers’ previousknowledge (Yi, 2003:369). In 19th century, Scholars began to study the nature of readingcomprehension. Up to now, they have produced some valuable theories and modelsconcerning reading. There is some disagreement about which theory or model is the best one,however the four reading models are more influential than others. They are bottom-up model,top-down model, interactive model and schema theory. The first two models have beenpopular in the teaching field since 1970s and have given an impetus to reading teaching. Thethird has been a mark of development of reading model.Bottom-up model refers to that reading is viewed as a passive decoding process from thesmallest linguistic units, phonemes and graphemes, for example to the largest ones. Readingmeans that readers rebuild the meaning the writer planed to express through identifyingprinted words. In other words, readers reconstruct the meaning of an article from the“bottom”, the smallest linguistic units (letters and words) to the “top” (phrases, clauses, andlinks between sentences). Gough is the first person to put forward the bottom-up model,which has exerted a great influence upon teaching English as an foreign language.
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2.2 Domestic research review of English reading teaching
As everyone knows, reading is one of the most important activities for human beings toobtain information and knowledge. As far as Chinese students are concerned, they learnEnglish as an foreign language. They have few chances to communicate with native Englishspeakers. As a result, reading is used as the main channel to learn the language. The purposeof reading instruction is not only to gain linguistic knowledge, like, say, grammar andvocabulary but to cultivate students’ appreciation and reading skills as well. The classroomreading instruction is dominated by the bottom-up reading model or the approach of grammarand translation. It has not attached much importance to developing student’s capabilities ofdiscourse analysis. This reading curriculum is called Intensive Reading, while another courseis named Extensive Reading that focuses on improving students’ reading strategies and skills.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Foundation ...... 14
3.1 Systemic functional grammar .... 14
3.1.1 The origin of systemic functional grammar ...... 14
3.1.2 Systemic grammar and functional grammar ..... 15
3.2 Three metafunctions ........ 16
3.3 Context theory ....... 18
3.4 A proposed model of teaching English reading....... 20
Chapter Four An Experimental Study of the Proposed Model ........ 25
4.1 The research design .... 25
4.2 The experiment process ........ 27
4.2.1 The experiment process....... 27
4.2.2 Classroom teaching procedures..... 28
Chapter Five Experiment Result and Data Analysis ..... 43
5.1 The result of tests of the CC and the EC........ 43
5.1.1 The result of the pre-test of the CC and the EC ..... 43
5.1.2 The result of the post-test of the CC and the EC.... 44
5.2 Data analysis..... 45
Chapter Five Experiment Result and Data Analysis
5.1 The result of tests of the CC and the EC
Firstly, the data collected during the experimental process is concerned with scores ofthe pre-test of the CC and EC. The aim of pre-test is to learn about students’ reading abilitybefore experiment, at the beginning of the experiment, the author tests both the CC and ECwith the test paper abridged from CET-4 of June, 2010. The test paper is made up of threeparts: skimming and scanning, reading in depth and close. And the total score is 50 points.Students’ scores of the CC and the EC are as follows: Secondly, the data collected during the experimental process is mainly about scores ofthe post-test of the CC and EC. At the end of the experiment teaching term, the author testsboth the EC and the CC with the test paper abridged from CET-4 of December, 2011. Duringabout five months teaching practice, the EC is carried out the systemic functional linguistics-based reading teaching while the CC is performed a traditional reading teaching.
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Conclusion
Through the 5-month teaching practice, the author got some findings and covered themajor points of them as follows:First, discourse reading ability is very important for students. It has a great effect notonly on grades of the reading tests but on effective comprehension and appreciation ofarticles. While teaching, teachers should have the awareness to cultivate students’ discoursereading ability in order to gain a thorough understanding of reading materials to achieve thereal purpose of reading.Second, it is feasible and applicable to use systemic functional linguistics as thefundamental theories of a teaching method. The feasibility of this teaching approach isdemonstrated through the author’s 5-month teaching practice. Students catch on analysis oftexts from context, which is helpful for them to get a better understanding the writers’ writingpurposes. By analyzing genre and structure of discourse, students come to choose differentreading strategies according to different genres. Instruction in the reading skills in thisteaching model contributes to the rapid growth of reading speed and accuracy. It turns outthat an analysis of cohesive devices enable students to understand texts at discourse level,which is really important for them. What is more, whether students can master cohesion ofdiscourse is closely related to their reading competence.
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Reference (omitted)