A Study On The Application Of Transfer Theory To English Reading Teaching In Junior High School

English reading learning is important and difficult for most students, especially for those junior high school students. Difficulties in the learning of English reading among junior high school students lie in the effect that the students’background knowledge has on the new knowledge learning, especially the knowledge that can be transferred. As a key factor that influences students’new knowledge learning, background knowledge exists during the whole learning process. English teachers should focus on transferring the learner’s background knowledge during reading process to make them better understand the whole reading text. At the same time, reading will be more efficient under the condition that the reading text complied with students’ background knowledge. Reading will become more efficient if students have the background knowledge and they can successfully transfer this background knowledge to the new reading text with the guidance of their teachers. Therefore, this thesis "A Study on the Application of Transfer Theory to English Reading Teaching in Junior High School" tries to seek some teaching methods of promoting positive transfer to optimize the English reading teaching in junior high school.The thesis firstly gives a brief introduction of the research background, questions and structure of the research. Then it reviews the literatures on language transfer, background knowledge and the relationship between background knowledge transfer and English reading teaching. Finally, some teaching methods of stimulating background knowledge transfer in English reading teaching are proposed. The main methods in this thesis include:(1) pre-discussion about the topic of the reading text;(2) vocabulary expansion game; and (3) note-taking of the reading methods and progress. These English reading teaching methods give students a life-long benefit.The methodologies adopted in this thesis are questionnaire, pretest, posttest, and interview. The questionnaire is designed to investigate the current situation of the usage of background knowledge in junior high school. The SPSS12.0is used in the pretest and posttest to analyze the data. And the interview is conducted at the end of the experiment to prove that the teaching methods of background knowledge transfer do help students improve their reading competence. The study of transfer has been a hot topic among language researchers. The present study proposes some methods to promote English reading teaching from the perspective of transfer theory. It is hoped that the result of the present research will be considered as a worthwhile idea both from the theoretical and practical aspects.