An Experimental Study Of The Relevance Theory-based Storytelling Approach To The Teaching Of English Vocabulary In A Junior High School

Vocabulary teaching,which features prominently in English teaching,has received intensive consideration from scholars in language learning.How to improve the students’ English vocabulary acquisition has become the emphasis of researches in English vocabulary teaching.Many scholars both in China and outside China believe that the storytelling approach,proposed by William Smith in the 1990 s,is an effective way for vocabulary teaching.The storytelling approach consists of the following five teaching steps:preparing the story,telling the story,retelling the story,discussing and writing the story.Through the instrumentality of experimental study,this thesis is designed to study the effects of the Relevance Theory-based storytelling approach on stimulating junior high school students’ interest in English vocabulary learning,as well as facilitating their receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary acquisition.To be more specific,two research questions in this thesis are as follows.The first one is whether the Relevance Theory-based storytelling approach can stimulate the junior high school students’ interest in learning English vocabulary.The second one is whether the Relevance Theory-based storytelling approach can promote the junior high school students’ receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary acquisition.60 students—30 from Class One Grade Eight as the experimental group and 30 from its counterpart Class Two as the control group—constitute the participants of the experiment.The whole experiment was unfolded from October 12,2020 to December14,2020.The research procedures include the English vocabulary level test,the pre-questionnaire,the pilot study,the Relevance Theory-based storytelling approach vocabulary teaching experiment,the immediate vocabulary tests,the delayed vocabulary tests,the post-questionnaire and the interviews.All the collected data were analyzed with SPSS 26.0.The results of the questionnaires reflect that there is a significant difference in vocabulary learning interest before and after the experiment.And the results of tests reveal that both for the receptive vocabulary and for the productive vocabulary,there is a significant difference between the Relevance Theory-based storytelling approach and traditional ways to the teaching of English vocabulary in the junior high school students’ vocabulary acquisition.The major finding of this study is that the Relevance Theory-based storytelling approach can stimulate the junior high school students’ interest in English vocabulary learning.Furthermore,this approach has better effects on the junior high school students’ receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary acquisition than traditional ways of vocabulary teaching.Therefore,the Relevance Theory-based storytelling approach can be applied in English vocabulary teaching lessons to stimulate the junior high school students’ interest in learning English vocabulary and facilitate their vocabulary acquisition.