Application Of Context Theory To Oral English Teaching Of University Physical Education Majors

In the modern world, international sports communication is becoming increasinglyfrequent. Athletes from various countries try to show themselves or win glory for theirmotherland in international sports events like Olympic Games. English, as the maincommunication language in such events becomes more and more important. But currentliterature shows that sports major graduates, who are expected to participate in sportsexchange or engage in related professions, lack basic knowledge and understanding of foreignculture. Besides, in the college English classrooms, most teachers still adopt the traditionalteaching mode in the input-poor foreign language environment. All these factors result in theirpoor English communicative ability.This study applies the context theory in oral English teaching of sports major studentsin a university in north China. The research samples sixty freshmen of sports majors from twoclasses as the research subjects. The number of students from each class is30. First,questionnaire survey and oral English test were carried out to check the oral English level ofthe students. And the result shows that there is no significant difference between their oralEnglish proficiency. Then, contrastive experiment was carried out in the two parallel classes.Class A was taught in the traditional teaching method, whereas class B in the context-basedmethod. At the end of the experiment, another oral test was conducted, the results of whichshow that there appeared significant differences. The mean score of Class B is significantlyhigher than that of class A. Further, questionnaire survey shows that after one semester’ study,the students of class B show higher motivation in oral English learning.The paper includes six chapters. The first chapter presents the background, purpose andsignificance, research methods, and the structure of the whole thesis. The second chapter is literature review. This part introduces the definition of oral English as well as the presentresearch situation of the domestic and foreign scholars. The third chapter clarifies the theoryof context which provides the theoretical basis and theoretical framework for thesis writing.The fourth chapter presents the research method of a questionnaire survey and oral test. Thefifth chapter presents the data and discussion about questionnaire survey and oral test. Basedon the experiment data by qualitative and quantitative analysis, the effectiveness of thecontext teaching model is confirmed. The sixth chapter is the conclusion.