A Study On The Effects Of Different Contexts On Vocabulary Knowledge Learning For Non-english Major Students

How context affects second language vocabulary learning is an important research topic of Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. Nation makes the distinction of direct and indirect vocabulary learning. According to Nation's distinction, the effects of context on vocabulary learning researches can be studied from these two aspects of direct and indirect vocabulary learning. Previous research investigating the effects of contextualized and decontextualized tasks on vocabulary learning has focused on whether or not learners were able to gain knowledge of meaning and form. However, aspects of knowledge that would seem more likely to be gained through learning from context have rarely been measured, such as, the vocabulary knowledge of grammatical functions, syntagmatic association, paradigmatic association and so on.The present study's participants are selected from three first-year EFL classes at North West Normal University. In class 1, subjects learnt vocabulary by a word list; class 2 by a single glossed sentence; class 3 by a glossed passage. After the conclusion of the treatments, an unexpected vocabulary test was administered. Five types of word knowledge (orthography, paradigmatic association, meaning and form, syntagmatic association, and grammatical functions) were isolated and measured in series of 10 tests. Productive tests were designed to measure fuller knowledge, and receptive tests were designed to measure partial knowledge.The objective of this study is to answer the following two questions:1. Do different vocabulary learning contexts ---- word list, a single glossed sentence, a glossed passage, have different effects on five aspects of vocabulary knowledge: orthography, paradigmatic association, syntagmatic association, grammatical functions, and meaning and form?2. If they have significant difference, which type of learning contexts will promote better vocabulary knowledge learning?All the experiment data collected by using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and the results show that:1. The larger gains on the ten vocabulary tests indicate that the receptive tests were more sensitive to gains in partial knowledge than productive tests.2. Different vocabulary learning contexts have different effects on five aspects of vocabulary knowledge. Learning vocabulary by word list has better effects on vocabulary knowledge of orthography and meaning and form than single sentence context and passage context. Learning vocabulary by passage context and single sentence context has better effects on vocabulary knowledge of syntagmatic association, paradigmatic association and grammatical functions than word list. However, learning vocabulary by passage context has better effects on vocabulary knowledge of paradigmatic association and productive grammar than glossed sentence.These findings have some pedagogical implications. For the purpose of helping learners improve English vocabulary retention rate and amount, English should introduce the cognitive linguistic perspective and semantic network into vocabulary instruction and consciously help learners combine the direct and indirect vocabulary knowledge learning modes in their English vocabulary studies.