A Study On The Application Of Context Theory To The English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

English reading is the core part in high school English learning, and great attention is paid to the linguistic knowledge, such as the words, phrases and grammar rules, which reduces the learning of the non-linguistic knowledge.In order to help students master more reading strategies, enhance students’ reading motivation and improve reading proficiency, the thesis attempts to apply context theory to English reading teaching. Three research questions are explored in this thesis:1. Can the students’ reading strategies be improved through the teaching method based on context theory?2. Can the students’ reading motivation be changed through the teaching method based on context theory?3. Can the students’ reading proficiency be enhanced through the teaching method based on context theory?The teaching research is carried out in No.2 Senior High School in Jinzhou, Liaoning Province for four months and a total of 67 students participate in the study. The experimental class(EC) and the control class(CC) are randomly selected. EC applies teaching method based on context theory to the English reading teaching, which emphasis linguistic context and non-linguistic context. CC applies the traditional method of reading, which is the Grammar Translation Method. Compared to the new teaching method, little attention is paid to the content of texts. Quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis are taken in the experiment. And the data of the experiment is analyzed by SPSS19.0 to testify the research questions.Results of the research show that:1. As to the reading strategy, the average score in EC and CC is 45.34 and 31.96 respectively, and the Sig.(2-tailed) is less than 0.05. The data shows that students’ reading strategies can be improved through the teaching method based on context theory. The change focuses on cognitive strategies and social/ affective strategies in reading.2. After the experiment, the change in the integrative motivation in EC is not significant(Sig.(2-tailed) =0.734); however, the change in the instrumental motivation is significant(Sig.(2-tailed) =0.024). Thus, the data can illustrate that the reading instrumental motivation is improved after the experiment.3. Then the independent sample T-test shows Sig.(2-tailed) is 0.16, which indicates the significant change in reading proficiency in EC after the experiment.Therefore, the context theory is beneficial to English reading teaching and learning. However, the research still has some limitations, which should be considered in future studies.