Action Research On The Application Of Contextual Clues To Training Middle School Students’ Inferential Capability In English Reading

The English Curriculum Standards for General Senior Middle School(2020)points out that context plays an important role in the development of English language competence,but it is often ignored by students in reading comprehension.Therefore,teachers should attach great importance to context in reading teaching and cultivate students’ inferential capability using context.In order to explore the influences of contextual clues on senior middle school students’ inferential capability and the ways to train it,this study,combining contextual clue teaching with cloze test training,aims to answer the following questions:1.What effects can the application of contextual clues have on senior middle school students’ inferential capability in English reading? 2.How should students’ inferential capability be cultivated?In this study,one natural class of Grade 2 in a senior middle school in Yanbian Prefecture were selected as the research objects.And the action research is divided into two rounds according to the school teaching practice,the first round before the mid-term examination,and the second round after the mid-term examination.This study collected data through think-aloud,questionnaire survey,interview and testing,and analyzed the data using SPSS 19.0,drawing the following conclusions:Firstly,the application of contextual clues can help improve senior middle school students’ inferential capability in English reading,which is mainly manifested as the enhancement of context awareness and the increase of judgement methods(especially the inference judgement methods)and cloze test scores.Secondly,when applying contextual clues to training students’ inferential capability,the content of teaching should be highlighted through various ways like instruction,frequency and mission requirement in an attempt to turn passive attention into active attention.The results of this research are helpful to improve English teachers’ understanding of contextual clues and inferential capability,and provide references for teachers to apply contextual clues to cultivating students’ contextual awareness and inferential capability in cloze test.