Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Purpose and Significance of the Research
Reading plays a significant role in English teaching. It is an important way toacquire information and is one of the basic skills in communication. However, readingis difficult for EFL (English as a foreign language) readers, especially those studentsin vocational colleges，who lack English language skills. Since 2006, a reform ofEnglish reading class has been carried out in many vocational colleges in order toecho the call of the Ministry of Education that “the practical ability cultivation shouldbe regarded as the development direction of vocational college" (Ministry ofeducation 2006), according to which most vocational colleges should offermajor-specific courses for students in different departments and majors. Manytechnical terms from a variety of majors and industries appeared in the students'reading materials, such as elastic modulus in Architecture English, tachycardia innursing English, which in turn have greatly increased the difficulty of the Englishreading materials.Meanwhile, the traditional teaching method has become a hurdle to thedevelopment of learners' English reading skills. It pays too much attention to theforms of language itself, such as pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc. However,reading is not only about comprehending the meaning of words, phrases, sentencesand passages. There exist a lot of factors beyond language itself, e.g. cognitiveenvironment, which may greatly affect the effective communication between thewriter and the potential readers. The Relevance Theory, a relatively new linguistictheory, has drawn increasing attention from linguists and language teachers. In orderto find a more desirable English teaching method, this thesis will first make a detailedresearch on the cognitive mechanism underlying the reading comprehension process.Then an experiment will be carried out in the real classroom settings to test thefeasibility of the relevance-theoretic model of reading teaching. The findings of thestudy are expected to be helpful to the English teaching in vocational colleges.
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1.2 Organization of the Thesis
This thesis consists of six chapters:Chapter One gives a brief introduction to the thesis, including the researchbackground, the significance and purpose of the present study and the organization ofthe thesis.Chapter Two provides a literature review of previous studies on reading.Chapter Three elaborates on the theoretical framework of the thesis. This chaptermakes a detailed account of the important concepts and ideas in Relevance Theory.Chapter Four investigates the reading comprehension process from the perspectiveof Relevance Theory.Chapter Five attempts to apply Relevance Theory to practical English readingteaching in vocational colleges. An experiment was carried out to test the feasibility ofthe Relevance-theoretic model of reading teaching.Chapter Six makes a few suggestions for English reading cheching in accordancewith the Relevance-theoretic account of reading comprehension in the previouschapter.Chapter Seven presents the main findings and limitations of this study and putsforward a few suggestions for further studies.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 The Bottom-Up Model
This model holds that the process of reading is “a decoding process ofreconstructing the author's intended meaning via recognizing the printed letters andwords, and building up a meaning for a text from the smallest textual units at the‘bottom’ (letters or words) to larger and larger units at the ‘top’ (phrases, clauses,inter-sentential linkages)" (Carrell 1988: 2). According to Fries (1962: 35)，whilereading the reader “must leam to transfer from the auditory signs for language signalsto a set of visual signs for the same signals". Obviously, this model attaches greatimportance to linguistic knowledge and decoding skills. Although the bottom-upmodel of reading can explain some phenomenon of the reading process, it simplifiesthe com
