On The Application Of Cognitive Context To English Reading Teaching In Senior Middle School

Reading is one of the most important parts of English teaching and learning, and it accounts for a large proportion of score in the examination. However, many students lose a lot of scores in the reading part because they cannot correctly understand the content of the article, or grasp the ideas of the author. The essence of reading is, through the text between the author and the reader, a kind of interactive communication process. If readers can’t achieve agreement with the author, the communication will fail. In recent years, a lot of researches on English reading teaching have been done by the domestic scholars, but there are few researches done from the angle of cognitive context.Context has long been seen as a static concept, but with the development of cognitive science and the further study of language communication, Sperber and Wilson(1986) put forward the cognitive context. It is the core concept of relevance theory. Relevance theory sees communication as a process of reasoning. Cognitive context, a psychological construct, is a series of information stored in the brain. It is the assumption that involves the context, physical environment of communication, and the memory, cultural knowledge and ideas of the communicators. Reading is also a communication between readers and authors which is expressed by written language. It is also an ostensive-inferential process. Therefore, the context teaching based on the relevance theory can be applied to English reading teaching.This thesis aims at answering the following three research questions: 1) How do the students do their reading comprehension? 2) What is the result of using the cognitive context in the English reading teaching? 3) If it does have a good result, which knowledge of the cognitive context plays the most important role?In this study, two classes of senior one in No. 2 Middle School of Hengshui, Hebei Province, are chosen as the study groups, and the experiment lasts one semester. One class is the experimental class, and the other is the control class. Questionnaire is used to collect students’ information about how students usually do English reading. In the experiment, before the test the author first uses the pre-test to detect whether the students’ reading level in the two classes is at the same level. In the experimental class, the author teaches under the guidance of cognitive context. In the control class, the author teaches according to the teaching plan of the school. Post-test is used to detect if there is a difference in the reading scores of two classes. The result shows that the scores of the experimental class are significantly higher than that of the control class.Based on these findings, the researcher concludes that English reading teaching under the cognitive context, especially the logic information ability, has a positive effect on English reading. Therefore, teachers should guide and cultivate the students’ cognitive context awareness, and teach students how to use the context to get a better understanding of the article content.