An Experimental Study Of Junior High School English Vocabulary Teaching Based On Socio-cultural Theory

In junior high schools,many teachers teach and explain new words without considering language background,and test the students’ words by dictation.Under this traditional and single vocabulary teaching method,students are less interested in vocabulary learning and the effect is not significant.The reason why socio-cultural theory is important is that it links social and cultural contexts while learning new languages.Only by contacting learners’ lifestyle and cultural background to learn language,can we learn English better.In order to improve the effect of students’ vocabulary learning,some scholars began to infiltrate socio-cultural theory in English teaching.This study adopts research methods of interview,test and questionnaire survey to explore the feasibility of applying socio-cultural theory to vocabulary teaching after the teacher changes traditional vocabulary teaching methods.In view of the problems faced by the current English vocabulary teaching and learning in junior high school,the focus of this paper is to apply several important concepts of socio-cultural theory in English vocabulary teaching and learning which includes mediation,Zone of Proximal Development,scaffolding,and internalization.The research finds that socio-cultural theory is available in classroom teaching,and it can promote students to get a better grade.Therefore,socio-cultural theory is feasible in the application of vocabulary teaching.In addition,for the better application of socio-cultural theory in vocabulary teaching,the author puts forward suggestions and hopes that this study will promote and enlighten vocabulary teaching.Teachers should pay attention to the following points: 1)explaining vocabulary with background knowledge;2)organizing diversified vocabulary teaching activities;3)increasing the exercises of the word.This paper can be divided into seven parts.The first part introduces the research background,research purpose,research significance andresearch structure;the second part is the theoretical basis,introducing the definition and compositionof socio-cultural theory;the third part is the related research of vocabulary teaching and socio-cultural theory at home and abroad;the fourth part mainly explores the phenomena and problems of English vocabulary teaching in junior high school through pre-questionnaire and pre-interview;the fifth part introduces the teaching practice,which includes research questions,research methods,research objects and research process of this paper;The sixth part is the analysis and discussion of the results of the pre-test and post-test,post-questionnaire and post-interview.The last part is the conclusion of this study,advice on vocabulary teaching,limitations and suggestions for future research.