An Empirical Study On The Application Of Context Theory To English Reading Teaching In Senior High Schools

The purpose of this thesis is to study the application of context theory to English reading teaching in high schools.As a core concept of pragmatics,"context" has attracted a lot of attention from scholars.Malinowski(1923)believes that the language environment is indispensable for understanding the language.The research of context theory has a great effect on promoting the teaching and learning of foreign languages.Reading as an important part of language learning plays a significant role in senior high schools.However,there still exists some problems in the current reading teaching.This is mainly because of a single approach of reading teaching,which emphasizes grammar teaching.Thus,the students lack interest in reading,which results in their poor reading ability.Based on context theory,from the perspectives of linguistic context(semantic context)and non-linguistic context(context of situation and context of culture),this thesis intends to apply the context theory to English reading teaching,hoping to find an effective approach to reading teaching in senior high schools.The study tries to investigate the following three questions:1)What are the effects of the application of context theory to English reading teaching in senior high schools on students’ reading interests and attitude?2)What are the effects of the application of context theory to English reading teaching in senior high schools on students’ use of reading strategies?3)What are the effects of the application of context theory to English reading teaching in senior high schools on students,reading competence?This research mainly adopts experimental research methods.The experimental subjects are from two parallel classes in Grade Three of a senior high school in Changsha.Class 3 is the control class,and Class 1 is the experimental class.The context theory was applied in the experimental class,while in the control class,the reading was taught mainly through the bottom-up model.During the three-month experiment,two questionnaires and two reading tests were carried out and the results were analyzed by SPSS 21.0.The results of the experiment show:(1)The application of context theory to reading teaching is helpful for students’ reading interest and attitude.After the experiment,it can be seen that the students in the experimental class have significant changes in their interest and attitude towards English reading,while the change of the control class is not obvious.(2)The application of context theory to reading teaching can improve students’ use of reading strategies.After the experiment,it showed that most students in the experimental class could use vocabulary strategies and prediction strategies when they are reading.However,there are no significant changes in fast reading strategies after the experiment.(3)The application of context theory to reading teaching is conducive to the improvement of students’ reading ability.Through the reading test,semantic context and context of situation perform remarkable functions in reading for the students,but the cultural context has weaker influence in the experiment class.The author still hopes that the study can help improve reading teaching in senior high schools,by making more English teachers realize the.importance and the necessity of teaching reading in context,and providing guidance for them on how to apply context theory to reading teaching.However,because of restrictions of author’s theoretical competence and objective reasons,this experiment inevitably has some limitations.Therefore,the further research on the application of context theory to English reading teaching should be continued.