Chapter 7　Reader Reaction to the Coherence Resources in the EngIish Learning Advertisements

As suggested in the review in Section 2.1 and in Chapter 3，the construction of discourse coherence relies not only on the resources in the discourse，but also on the reader's active mental construction during discourse processing and comprehension.The previous three chapters（Chapters 4，5，and 6）have elaborated on the textual aspects of coherence which are conceptualized into three levels：global coherence，local coherence and cohesion in layout.This chapter will deal with the effects of the three levels of coherence on reader reaction during the comprehension process of the English learning advertisements.Specifically，empirical methods are employed to investigate the correlation between the three levels of coherence and the reader's mental responses in comprehension.Therefore these studies will provide empirical support for the conceptualization of coherence construction and semiotic analysis in the previous chapters，and also have great value for our understanding of the mental activities when people read multimodal discourses.

As introduced in Section 3.4，the empirical research on reader reaction includes three studies—an eye-tracking experiment，a memory recognition test and an evaluation investigation which aim to uncover three aspects of reader's mental activities respectively—attention in online processing，memory and appreciation.

Since the three studies are designed with reference to the three-level framework of coherence construction，the discussion will also follow this line.Specifically，results will be discussed with reference to global coherence，local coherence and surface cohesion respectively.Section 7.1 will be concerned with the eye-tracking experiment which is aimed at the cognitive processes in the reading behavior.After a brief introduction of the experiment and a report of the overall eye movement data on the English learning advertisements，the results concerning the effects of the three levels of coherence，namely global coherence，local coherence and cohesion in layout，will be reported and discussed in the sub-sections.Section 7.2 will deal with the memory recognition test which is designed to explore the effects of global coherence，local coherence and cohesion in layout as three variables on the short term memory of the materials.Section 7.3 will elaborate on the evaluation investigation which aims to find the relation between textual coherence construction and readers'appreciation of the English learning advertisements.Section 7.4 will take a comprehensive view towards the results of the three empirical studies in order to obtain more profound insights into the reader's mental responses in comprehending multimodal discourses.