| Context is a hot issue in linguistics and in language pedagogy. The former vice premier Li Lanqing once said, the way we teach English is time-consuming with poor results and what we get is not equivalent to what we give. Other scholars, such as Wang Churning, say that the reason why EFL teaching in China lacks efficiency is due to the lack of context. The 'New Curriculum Standard for Senior English for China' (manuscript to be tested, 2001) advises that teachers should guide students to learn English by inference, consultation, combining with context. Comprehension is the essence of language learning. So this thesis tries to deal with context, meaning, meaning inference in context and its application in EFL teaching in order to bring to light the ways to improve the efficiency of EFL teaching in classroom teaching practice.The body of this thesis consists of four chapters:The first chapter elucidates the current trend towards the context study, including static study and dynamic study. Although there are various definitions and classifications of context, the major ideas are two kinds: static or dynamic. Those who hold the static idea regard context as something 'out there', while those who have the dynamic idea see context as something generated in language use and created by the dynamics of interaction between the utterer and the interpreter in relation to what is (or is thought to be) 'out there'. This thesis makes a concession to both ideas and admits that context is both static and dynamic.The second chapter illustrates the relationship between meaning and context, meaning and relevance. In communication, both speakers and hearers rely on context in constructing and interpreting the meaning of utterances. Saeed (1997) summarizes four hearer's interpretative tasks and lists three types of meaning. Relevance reveals the relationship between the contextual effect and the processing effort in decoding the meaning of an utterance in context...
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