Discourse Analysis Theories and Senior High School English Reading Teaching

王麗娜

【Abstract】 English reading plays a very important role in English teaching. It is the basis of language input. However， the situation of students discourse analysis ability is not so optimistic. In this paper， the author gives a brief analysis of a reading text based on the theory of discourse analysis， hoping that it can have a positive effect on students？蒺 comprehension of the text and teachers teaching.

【Key words】 reading; discourse analysis theory; Junior Middle School

【中圖分類號】G633.41 【文獻標識碼】A 【文章編號】2095-3089（2014）07-0127-01

1.Introduction

The traditional reading teaching mainly pays attention to knowledge accumulation， however， it is difficult to improve the students？蒺 reading ability. Thus， though most students spend lots of time in learning English but their language input is not so satisfactory. In this paper， the author gives a brief analysis of a reading text in College Entrance Examination in Shanghai in 2014 based on the theory of discourse analysis.

2.Related Concepts and Theories

2.1 Discourse Analysis

Harris first established this term. He pointed out that ‘language does not occur in stray words or sentences， but in connected discourse （Harris， 1952： 357）. The research of dis？鄄course， or ‘discourse analysis， is concerned with ‘the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used （McCarthy2004：5）.

2.2 Cohesion

Cohesion is a semantic concept， Hoey （1991） defined cohesion as ‘the way certain words or grammatical features of a sentence can connect that sentence to its predecessors and successors in a text.

3.The Application of Discourse Analysis in a Reading Sample

In this paper， the author chose a passage from College Entrance Examination in Shanghai in 2014 and gave a brief analysis based on discourse analysis theory.

3.1 The genre of passage

Generally， genre refers to the types or forms of the text. Narration， exposition and argumentation are the basic genres. The main characteristic of narration is that it ?has five elements when/where/who/what/why. The models of exposition are problem？鄄solving mode， advocate？鄄anti advocate mode， questions？鄄answer mode， summarization？鄄specific mode. The main elements in argumentation are argument， evidence and reasoning. After fast reading the passage， we can easily find that the genre of this passage is exposition. This passage mainly about that there are also many deceive phenomenon among animals in nature.

3.2 The Use of Cohesion

In terms of reference， the first ‘that （in Paragraph 1） refers to honesty is a good thing. The second‘that refers to many animals behave dishonestly. In terms of conjunction， there are such conjunctive words as ‘but （in Paragraph 1， 3，6）. The conjunctive words ‘and （in Paragraph 3， 5， 6）. From the conjunctive word ‘but in the sentence ‘But does Mother Nature agree？ Animals can？蒺t talk， but can they lie in other ways？ We can easily get the right answer to question 69 is A. From the conjunctive word ‘but in the sentence ‘But an animal expert once saw a losing chimp take the winner？蒺s hand and start fighting again.We can get the answer to question 67 is B. From the conjunctive word ‘and in the sentence ‘But some clever chimps learn to cry very softly when they find food. That way， other chimps don？蒺t hear them， and they don？蒺t need to share their food. We can get the answer to question 68 is A. In terms of synonymy. ‘a broken wing ?in the sentence ‘It pretends to have a broken wing and ‘hurt in the sentence ‘The predator follows the hurt adult， are synonymys. So ，we can get the answer to question 66 is D.

3.3 The use of Discourse Patterns

Discourse patterns mainly consists of four types： Problem？鄄Solution Pattern， Claim？鄄Counterclaim Pattern， Question？鄄Answer Pattern and General？鄄Specific Pattern. Hoey divided Problem？鄄Solution Pattern into several elements： situation→problem→response→evaluation. For Claim？鄄Counterclaim Pattern， the author shows that whether he agree or disagree with some statements or opinions which have been universally accepted by most people. Hoey（1983） put forward that there are two categories of General？鄄Specific Pattern： the general？鄄example pattern and the preview？鄄detail pattern. Question？鄄Answer Pattern is to put a question first and then try to find an answer.

From the above definitions， we can see that the discourse pattern of this passage is General？鄄Specific Pattern. The author first put forward the question‘Animals can？蒺t talk， but can they lie in other ways？Then give specific analysis by given two examples ‘birds and ‘chimpanzees. In this way， we can easily understand the structure of the passage and know the content of the passage quite quickly.

4.Conclusion

From the use of discourse analysis theory， we can see that it can do some help in ?reading. Thus， it is suggested that the teachers and students may take this method into consideration. Meanwhile， due to the limitation of the ability of the authors and other reasons， some other related theories which can also help students reading was not discussed and the author did not carry out an experiment to test the validity of the method. Thus， it is suggested that a research with an experiment and a more detail research will be much more helpful.

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