The Role Of Context In Foreign Language Teaching

Since the term context appeared, it has been gaining more and more attention for researchers, language teachers and learners are trying to find an effective way mastering a language, especially a foreign language. In our traditional foreign language teaching classrooms, because of the limited environment, too much emphasis is laid on linguistic knowledge instead of on socio-linguistic, pragmatic and cultural knowledge of language use. Although sometimes the word"context"is mentioned in teaching, in most cases it refers to linguistic context. As a result, the students who passed the exams with a high score don't know how to communicate with the foreign language. In a simple word, teaching foreign language is to make learners know his role and status in communication. In this thesis, the following questions will be answered respectively: Why do we have to teach foreign language in context? What are the functions of context? How do we apply the context teaching method in the real teaching practice?This thesis initiates with an introduction to the basic notions that may influence our understanding of teaching in context. The differences and similarities between language learning and acquisition, second and foreign language are mentioned.Chapter one presents an introduction to the views on what context is from different linguists,then the definition of systematic-functional grammar is introduced briefly to show that the grammar is the theoretical basis for teaching language in context for it indicates that language and context are inextricably related.Chapter two explains why we have to teach foreign language in context. First we will discuss the relationship between meaning and context. In most cases the lexical meaning can't help us get the speaker's real intention, so we have to put the language in context to get the utterance meaning. First language acquisition process is briefly reviewed to indicate that context facilitates the process of language acquisition. Teaching foreign language in context can also help learners to eliminate the negative transfer of the first language. Then we will talk about Krashen's input hypothesis to show that comprehensible input is helpful to second language acquisition. The next part is to explain that the comprehensible input—learning in context--will lead to appropriate output. The definition of communication and the goal of foreign language acquisition are mentioned to explain that language has to be learned in context.Chapter three discusses the functions of context. Context has two functions: interpretation and restriction. From the three constituents of context, linguistic, cultural and situational context the author talks about its interpretive and restrictive functions.Chapter four talks about how to apply context teaching method to classroom teaching. In this part the author first gives a brief introduction to the current situation of foreign language teaching in China, and then offers some reasons of the poor achievements. Since usually we divide the language skills into five parts: reading, listening, speaking, writing and translation. In this part the author presents how to improve the five skills respectively with the help of context.The last part is conclusion that summarizes the whole thesis and indicates the significance of teaching in context.