The Application Of Context Theory In EFL Reading Teaching For English Majors

The practical use of language cannot be detached from the context. Up to now. many linguists have done a great deal of researches on this field and have found context plays a momentous role in language application. Indeed, context is fundamental for language comprehension, especially for the understanding of the deeper meaning beyond the language. However, up till now linguists do not reach on a common definition about context for different fields. In this paper, context is divided into linguistic and non-linguistic context. On the basis of extensive researches at home and abroad, this paper tries to prove that how important the application of context theory in English teaching and learning is to improve the English majors’ proficiency in reading comprehension, especially for the minority students.The subjects of this study were66freshmen of two classes who major in English education at Zhaotong University. One is the control class and the other one is experimental class. During the whole experimental process, the author adopts the traditional teaching approach in the control class, and the instruction of context theory is conducted in the experimental class. Meanwhile, the teacher could discuss and strengthen the benefits to enhance the students’reading ability by different contexts. It thinks that linguistic context can be used to help students to guess the meaning of new words, or eliminate ambiguity and vagueness, and so on. Or we may employ the context of situation to help students to master the appropriate content. We can also make use of the context of culture to help students to understand all kinds of background knowledge and stimulate their learning interests.Southwest region belongs to remote mountainous area and there distributes many minorities, the basis of most minority students is poor; teachers could take some targeted measures to direct students. The experiment demonstrates that context theory could help to greatly improve students’interests and capacity of reading comprehension. Meanwhile, it provides reference methods for teachers on reading teaching. By means of context theory, students can choose a relatively easy method to solve a variety of problems during reading. The aim of this paper is to help teachers to improve teaching method, and help students to comprehend reading materials and improve the capacity of reading comprehension.