Developing Discourse Competence through Reading Skills: a discourse analysis approach

Abstract

Formerly, language was looked at in isolation and the focus was on acquiring propositional and accuracy rules in the target language without considering the context in which it is embedded. A formal approach to language is not enough for FL learners to become members of the target discourse community. What is needed is a functional view of language that allows the learners to communicate socially. A discourse-based approach to language teaching is adopted which concentrates on meaning and communication. Its aim is to unlock the supra-sentential relationships. This approach aims at developing learners' discourse competence, a component accounting for describing the inter-sentential relationships that exist within a text. The present paper endeavors to develop learners' discourse competence through reading.