A Research On The Application Of Context Theory To Reading Classes For Non-English Majors

Joseph Addison once said that “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to thebody.” From the sentence, we can realize the importance of reading. This saying alsoshows that among the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing inEnglish learning, reading is the most basic one. According to the actual situation ofnon-English majors’ reading course of the colleges in China, in order to improve thestudents’ reading comprehension ability, the author tries to integrate the context theoryinto the reading comprehension courses. At the same time, this thesis uses the statisticanalysis software to prove the important role of the context when students do thereading comprehension. In fact, more and more scholars have paid too much to thecontext theories. So the related theories of context are widely used in language teachingparticularly. With context theories frequently applied in the teaching of readingcomprehension course, specific teaching methods used by teachers in the process ofreading teaching has become the focus of this problem. Most researchers focuses onhow we can use context theory effectively in learning English and how the students canmake a great progress of reading comprehension in the limited school time.In this thesis, the first is the introduction part, explaining the background andsignificance of the study. After that, the next part is literature review. The secondchapter is about the development of context theories and reading comprehension, whichinclude the definition, types of the context and the three reading models, and theresearches on context in reading comprehension. The third and forth parts answered theresearch questions through the experiments on the non-English majors. While using thecontext theory in reading, to what extent can context theory improve the non-English majors’ reading competence? Based on context theory, what are differences between thestudents of high proficiency and low proficiency in reading comprehension? The thirdpart is the research design; the main instruments are questionnaire and tests. The forthpart is about the data analysis. Discussion and results are also involved in this part. Theexperimental part is the most important part of this thesis. The last part is conclusionand limitations of this thesis and some suggestions are also given by the author. Thisstudy introduces the context-based reading strategies in the reading course. Trainingstudents have the habits of using strategies when they are reading. In this way, thecollege students can become proficient readers step by step. At last, they can have agood performance in the English Test.