A Study Of Application Of The Context Theory To College English Reading Instruction

ABSTRACT With the development of applied linguistics and functional teaching approach, linguists have become more and more interested in the practical use of language. Context is the most important notion in pragmatic study; which has been the basis of proper understanding of language.Context was first put forward by Malinoski in 1923, he argues that utterances and situation are bound up inextricably with each other and the context of situation is indispensable for the understanding of words. In fact, a correct understanding of the deep meaning of language is next to impossible without taking contextual factors into account. Context actually serves as the basis for the proper comprehension of language and is particularly of vital importance to clear understanding of internal meaning of language, since people always express their particular inner feelings by using utterances under different circumstances or certain cultural backgrounds.The thesis elaborates on the role of linguistic context and non-linguistic context in reading comprehension. With the support of such contextual knowledge, readers can in a relatively easy way resolve different kinds of problems occurred in the course of English reading comprehension. The purpose of the thesis is to help students better understand English reading materials and to improve English reading comprehension so that overall comprehension of materials can be achieved`.Research methods used in the thesis included questionnaire, pretest and posttest and item analysis. The subjects were 60 sophomores in Polytechnic Institute Taiyuan University of Technology with the same teacher providing instruction in these classes. They came from the Chemical Industry Class and Computer Class. The Chemistry Class was taken as the experiment class and the Computer Class was taken as the control class. The number of students in two classes was the same. At the beginning, their competence of learning was roughly equal.The questionnaire survey and the pretest showed that students had a poor knowledge of context and failed to solve many problems.In this study data were collected from the students'grades in the designed tests on their reading activities in class, and a comparison was made on the basis of the results of the two groups'students.The questions in the tests included 40 multiple-choice questions, adopting the form of CET-4 Reading Comprehension in the June of 2006 and December of 2006.Before the training, both the control class and experiment class received reading proficiency test. After the training, the students were given the same test of the same content to get the result. The method was a common one, that is, the teacher was the same, besides syllabus, book and schedule of teaching were the same. After the test, the data collected were analyzed with statistical techniques by using the software SPSS.The result of statistic analysis of a test proves that Context Theories can help students improve their comprehension accuracy and reading speed. What is more, students have gained a lot from English reading and enjoyed a lot by grasping some reading skills. The conclusion drawn from it is that Context Theories can be used into the teaching of English reading. Therefore, it is suggested that students should realize the crucial roles of contexts in the teaching of English reading. To achieve it, they need to choose suitable teaching materials to strengthen their consciousness of different contexts. .