衔接理论在初中英语阅读教学中的应用研究
CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Research
As one of the main sources of getting information, reading is no doubt of importance for EFL learners. A good reading competence is a necessity for those using English for academic and occupational purpose. For those who are learning at school, the challenge of reading is huge. In most English examinations, reading comprehension is the main skill to be tested, accounting for 40% to 50% of the total score in the test. Famous researchers like Wang Qiang (2000), Wen Qiufang conduct a series of researches in order to find out some beneficial reading strategies. Teachers also spare no efforts to find effective ways to improve students’ reading competence. Yet, despite continuous practice tutored by teachers in reading, many students find difficulty in making sense of text they need to read. Actually, the common phenomenon in junior high schools is that students pay their most attention to the learning of individual words, language points and fixed sentence patterns instead of the whole text. Most of the students care little about the arrangement of the whole text, the interrelation among different parts of a text. Thus, it is difficult for students to achieve further progress in English reading. Many scholars (Cook,1989; Grellet,1981; Mackay, 1979; Nuttall,2005) have suggested and some (Connor & Johns,1990)have shown that one of the reasons for this is failure to interpret the writer’s cohesive signals or fail to understand the functional value of individual sentences and thus their relationship to each other and the whole(Lubelska,1991).
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1.2 The Purpose and the Significance of the Study
The main purpose of the present study is to improve the reading comprehension ability of junior high school students based on cohesion theory. As is known to all, a good reader should not only pay attention to the meaning of a text, but also try to infer the underlined meaning and appreciate the experience and emotion of the writer. In this sense, cohesion theory suggests that to understand the structure or patterns of sentences and language points is not enough, and that he or she should make efforts to comprehend from the perspective of cohesion. There are many cohesion devices under this theory, including reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, reiteration and collocation. If readers can grasp the idea of these cohesion devices, it will be of great help for them to understand the whole passage. In a word, the present study is conducted for the aims of improving competence of reading of students in junior high school, wishing that students can get the trick and charm of applying the knowledge of cohesion ties into reading and get their confidence or interest in reading increased. There are many reasons for the researcher to conduct this research. Firstly, students in junior high school need necessary theoretical instructions. The researcher finds that many students do not have good reading habits and they fail to develop a system of reading strategies. Moreover, because they can not grasp the main idea of a text and the relationship between sentences, they can not perceive the text correctly. Cohesion theory, the theoretical basis of the current study, covers a field of linguistics, providing students with knowledge of cohesion devices and aids them to understand texts better. Secondly, findings on cohesion theory concerning reading teaching in junior high school are rare and most of which choose the senior high school students or college students as the participants. This thesis may fill the gap that no actual empirical results have been found in students of junior high school level and add new insight to further research.
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CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Cohesion
In the field of applied linguistics, the concern in recent years mostly is the essential characteristics of text. One important aspect of texture is cohesion. The term ‘cohesion’ is used to refer to the property of connectedness that characterizes a text in contrast to a mere sequence of words. Cohesion should play an important role in English language teaching, as readers and writers need to be aware of the links that hold chunks of text together and that contribute to the creation of a text as a unit of meaning. Cohesion can contribute to the readability of a text and have an impact on the comprehensibility and clarity of the argument. Additionally, the way in which links between textual chunks are signalled reflects genre-specific properties of texts. Thus, an appropriate recognition and use of cohesive devices are essential for language learners to develop a native-like competence of text reception and production. However, the teaching of cohesion does not seem to be a straightforward issue. The present study aims to highlight this part of teaching reading, hoping to find out some enlightening results in this area.
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2.2 English Reading Teaching
The following part narrates some notions of reading, the relationship between reading and cohesion, as well as some current studies in this area. Reading has always been a topic in language teaching. It is so far the most important of the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) in second language learning, particularly in English as a foreign language. The nature of reading has been defined variously by many linguists in history. According to Larry A. Harris and B. Smith(1979), reading is not only about understanding the literal meaning of the language but also about appreciating the underlying thoughts and feelings between the lines. So they describe reading as “the intellectual and emotional perception of a printed message.”(1979, p.5) Kenneth Goodman defines reading as “a complex process by which the reader reconstructs, to some degree, a message encoded by a writer in graphic language.” (1970, p.5) Christine Nuttall believes reading is the construction of meaning, is an interactive process between reader and writer (2005). Harris and Sipay support this view, suggesting that reading is an active process instead of passive or receptive (1979). Grellet also mentions in his book that when reading, readers need to extract the necessary information in the text and reject the irrelevant information to achieve more detailed comprehension(1981). According to these different descriptions about reading, its definition is rather clear. Reading appears within the interaction between readers and writers. It is active, constructive way to get the experience, emotions or attitudes of the writer. Thus, for English teachers, to lead students to think actively, to develop their consciousness of the underlying knowledge like cohesion devices, to analyze text scientifically in reading is necessary.
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CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY ........ 19
3.1 Research Questions and Hypothesis ....... 19
3.2 Participants .... 19
3.3 Instruments .... 20
3.3.1 Questionnaires.......... 20
3.3.2 Pre-test and post-test ....... 21
3.3.3 Interview .... 22
3.4 Research Procedures .......... 23
CHAPTER FOUR RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .... 33
4.1 Quantitative Analysis ......... 33
4.2 Qualitative Analysis of the Interviews .... 46
4.3 Discussion ..... 46
CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION .... 49
5.1 Major Findings ..... 49
5.1.1 Arousing Students’ Interest in English Reading ....... 49
5.1.2 Improving Students’ Reading Comprehension Ability .... 50
5.2 Implications from the Experiment .......... 50
5.3 Limitations .... 51
CHAPTER FOUR RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Quantitative Analysis
As stated before, each questionnaire includes 15 question items which can be divided into general three parts. The first part includes 5 questions. They aim to find out students’ interest or attitude toward English reading and whether they will acquire some reading strategies in reading. The following part of 3 questions focuses on students’ foundational knowledge and learning about cohesion devices in reading and the third part including the remaining 7 questions, focuses on their ability to apply cohesion devices to their reading practice. Under each question, there are four choices marked “A”, “B”, “C” and “D”. “A” stands for the highest degree and level. “D” stands for the lowest degree and level, while “B” and “C” are in the middle, having slight difference in degree. Therefore, for the third part of the questionnaire, if a student chooses “A” as the answer to the question, he or she is supposed to be very good and interested in cohesion devices and their application. However, if “D” is selected, student is supposed to have little or no ability or interest in cohesion theory and its application. If “B” or “C” is the answer, it means that student is at the average level.
CONCLUSION
In the present thesis, a study of applying some concepts of cohesion theory into junior high school reading teaching is completed. The author firstly gives a detailed introduction to cohesion theory, including its concepts, development, as well as its importance in the interpretation of a text. Then, the demonstration of how the teacher helps students improve their English reading comprehension ability by analyzing and using cohesive devices in daily lesson is vividly and comprehensively presented. To check if the experiment has the effectiveness on improving the test scores in reading comprehension, the researcher makes use of SPSS 19.0 to compare and to analyze. Moreover, the author also sets questionnaires and interview to investigate whether participants’ attitude toward reading has been improved and their awareness has been enhanced. Based on the data analysis from the current two-month experiment, there concluded several major findings.
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The reference (omitted)
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