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

English reading is an important way to test overall English skills,and it is vital as it involves vocabulary,grammar and discourse.The English Curriculum Standard(2017Edition)emphasizes that English reading teaching is led by thematic context,relies on discourse,integrates linguistic and cultural knowledge,and develops thinking and learning in the process.Based on this,this thesis aims to use Systemic Functional Linguistic Context Theory to design reading instruction in an attempt to answer the following two questions:(1)How does context-based English reading teaching affect students’ reading levels?In what ways are the effects more prominent?(2)How does the context-based English reading teaching affect students’ attitudes towards English reading?This thesis chooses two classes(Class 1 as the control class and Class 2 as the experimental class)of the grade one from Xinyang No.3 Senior High School as the research subject to conduct the four-month teaching.The experimental class uses the Context Theory to English reading teaching,while the control class uses the traditional teaching method.Before the experiment,the author adopts questionnaire and pre-test to the two classes to find out the students’ reading level,and there is no significant difference between the two classes.After the teaching,data are collected through post-test,questionnaire and interview,and SPSS 25.0 is used to analyze the changes in students’ reading level and reading attitudes.The thesis finds that:(1)There is a significant difference in the English reading levels of the students in the experimental and control classes after the experiment.The experimental class shows a significant increase in post-test scores(p=0.000<0.05),while the control class shows no significant change(p=0.206>0.05).In addition,students in the experimental class shows significant improvement in their ability to solve questions in the areas of main idea,guessing the meaning of words and author’s intention.This shows that the application of Context Theory to the English reading classroom can improve students’ reading level,and students can use linguistic and non-linguistic contexts to predict texts and analyze the genre of texts.(2)At the end of the teaching period,the students’interest in reading in the experimental class increased significantly,mainly in terms of their participation in English reading activities both in and out of class.It can be seen that the application of Context Theory to English reading teaching can create contextual teaching activities and improve students’ English reading level,at the same time,students are more actively participated in the class and their interest in reading has increased.