DISCOURSE STRUCTURE AND ITS IMPLICATION IN THE READING CLASSES

Abstract

<p>For years, EFL reading teachers and researchers have searched for effective methods to equip learners with efficient reading strategies, one of which concerns awareness-raising and exploration of discourse structures. That means making students meta-cognitively aware of strategies and techniques that promote reading comprehension in terms of the macro-level characteristics of the text. Research has pointed out indispensable roles of text structure knowledge in promoting an efficient strategy that enhances reading comprehension. This paper reports the results of a project on the proposed topic. Following the theoretical framework offered by researchers in the world, a pilot college reading course is carried out with deliberate instruction of discourse structures and discourse awareness-raising activities towards different text patterns, transitional words, frame markers, signaling languages… during one semester. The results demonstrated that metacognitive awareness of discourse structure and explicit teaching of textual features facilitate students’ reading comprehension. The implication has also been worked out to reinforce the possible application of discourse knowledge instruction in the tertiary language classrooms at a more metacognitive level. </p>