英语论文网

meanings are constant for all users”. TheEnglish language teaching now requires improving the learners’ language competence, notjust focuses on the language skills. Discourse teaching method aims to enlarge thelearners’ language knowledge and also to extend their abilities of language acquisition andlanguage performance. It attaches more attention to the teaching as a whole; this kind ofapproach not only enriches learners’ language knowledge, but also enhances learners’interest and enthusiasm in language learning. As for the discourse teaching, Englishteachers have to broaden the scope of language knowledge, and change their steps ofteaching more flexible. Under the influence of the grammar-translation approach, teacherstaught the text based on the sentence structure and meaning. They stress more on grammarand syntax than the comprehension of the text. Language teaching was considered to be aprocess of learning the literal meaning through the words and sentences. This methodinfluence English teachers to teach English in a fixed pattern, and the learners are misleadto think language learning is remembering the words and grammars. This teaching methoddoes not get an ideal effect.According to the traditional discourse teaching approach, teacher is the center of theclassroom. Grammar skill is regarded as the heart of the language ability and the structureis identified as the basis of language teaching. Structures are always taught withinsentences and word is chosen according to how well it enables sentence patterns to betaught. Accuracy is regarded as crucial element in both the pronunciation and grammar, soteachers take majority of time to explain language points and grammar in the course. Thephrases, grammatical structures and sentence patterns which are considered to be crucialof the marks, were the key teaching points in English discourse teaching. The wholestructure and the learners’ language competence are forgotten and the extra information ofthe discourse like the thinking system, the mental experience and the emotion of thediscourse is completely neglected. The practice drills consist of guided repetition andsubstitution activities. Learners from this kind of classroom get no language competencebut language skills.Some scholars and teachers attempt to find a way out, they switched to the generalstructure of the text, and they based on discourse. They pay their attention to the main ideaof the text and the topic sentences of text, and they try to lead the students to understandthe meaning and the general structure of the text. This text-dominated method still can notget an ideal effect of discourse teaching, either.A vital fact of this discourse teaching is that it underestimates the cognitive ability oflearners who can make inference and process the information in the real world. With theconcern of the learners, discourse teaching should center on the learners and cultivate theirlanguage competence.In sum, over several decades of the practice of language teaching, it is sure that manyworks from various perspectives have advanced the way of discourse teaching. However,we still need to work on this field and try to find a new way to improve English discourseteaching. Fortunately, image schema theory in cognitive linguistics provides us a newperspective to study discourse teaching. This paper will apply this new theory into Englishdiscourse teaching, and use image schema to acquire information, construct meaning andunderstand the know