A Study Of The Application Of Context In EFL Reading Comprehension

With the development of applied linguistics and systemic-functional grammar, linguists become more and more interested in the practical use of language. Language activity cannot be detached from its context, just as people's breath cannot be detached from air. Because of its close relationship with language, context has aroused great interest in linguistic circles.Context is an important concept in linguistics. According to contextual view from systemic-functional linguistics, context can be divided into three groups: context of culture, context of situation and linguistic context. This thesis tentatively classifies context into linguistic context and non-linguistic context, and non-linguistic context can also be subdivided into context of culture, context of situation and cognitive context. This thesis is, based on the concept of context from systemic-functional linguistics, engaged in probing into the application of context in English reading comprehension.First of all, the study gives a brief account of the relationship between structuralism and language comprehension, systemic-functional grammar and language comprehension. Next the study reviews past studies on context, including overseas scholars and Chinese scholars'studies of context. Then, the study illustrates the classification and application of context in EFL reading comprehension, including the application of linguistic context and non-linguistic context. The conclusion summarizes the whole study and proposes the significance of the study, that is, it enables us to know more clearly and more precisely what is a context's function. It provides new sight into the relevant study in other disciplines such as cross-cultural communication, discourse analysis, second language acquisition, foreign language teaching and translation, etc.