A Case Study On The Influence Of Thematic Context Creation On High School Students’ English Reading

Context is very important for language learning,as it sets the situation for text comprehension and production of language learners.In relevant literature,context can be divided into natural context and artificial context.In the practice of foreign language teaching and learning,learners make frequently use of the artificial contexts created by teachers.Therefore,English Curriculum Standard(2017)in China requires English teachers to create thematic context in English reading,a more definite scope of learning for language knowledge and a more specific and meaningful learning situation for cultural knowledge are also required.But there is still not enough attention on thematic context,which affects the improvement of students’ reading comprehension ability and the interest of reading.The purpose of this case study is to study whether the reading teaching in the thematic context can improve the high school students’ reading motivation and reading achievements.The research focuses on two questions:1.Can creation and use of thematic context improve senior high school students’ motivation in learning English reading?2.Can creation and use of thematic context improve senior high school students’ English reading achievements?The researcher conducts a one-semester experiment,and the participants consist of the two parallel grade 2 classes of fifty respectively from a senior high school,class 4 and class 10 are chosen to be control class(CC)and experimental class(EC).Before the experiment,the pre-questionnaire and pre-test are carried out in both classes to compare their interest and level of English reading.The CC still uses the traditional teaching method,the EC uses the thematic context approach.A semester later,CC and EC are asked to make the post-questionnaire and post-test to check whether there is significant difference between them.In this thesis,questionnaires,tests,interview and SPSS 21.0 software are used to process and analyze the data.Through the analysis of data,results show that:1.Reading teaching in thematic context can improve students’ reading motivation.(After the experiment,the mean value rises not nearly,and the P value is 0.969 in CC,while that in EC is 0.713 and 0.000).2.Reading teaching in thematic context raised students’ reading achievements(After the experiment,the average score increases 1.92 points,and the P value is 0.21 in CC;While the average score only increases 8.82 points,and the P value is 0.000 in EC.).It can be seen that reading teaching in thematic context is propitious to improve students’ reading ability and to promote their motivation.Admittedly,there are some shortcomings,such as insufficient time and samples.