An Experimental Study Of Contextual Teaching Method In Teaching English Vocabulary In Rural Senior High Schools

The cornerstone of English learning is vocabulary,and vocabulary directly affects senior high school students’ listening,speaking,reading and writing abilities.The teaching method of English vocabulary has a direct impact on students’ English learning achievements and vocabulary learning strategies.In remote rural areas of China,English learning is affected by single teaching method and weak foundation of students,and the effectiveness of English vocabulary teaching needs to be improved.In senior high school English teaching,most students lack professional instructions and do not master effective English vocabulary learning strategies.Therefore,it is especially important to learn vocabulary under the guidance of proper teaching methods.Under the requirements of the new curriculum standards,English vocabulary learning is neither simple word memorization nor independent word drills,but integrated language practice activities in a specific context with a specific theme.Based on reading a lot of literature,the author tries to apply the contextual teaching method to English vocabulary teaching in senior high schools in rural areas and hope to promote the English vocabulary learning of students in rural areas.In order to investigate the effectiveness of the contextual teaching method in teaching English vocabulary in rural senior high schools in remote areas,the author uses the contextual teaching method to guide students to learn vocabulary in context by creating different contexts.The two questions below are what this thesis aims to address:1)What are the effects of applying the contextual teaching method in teaching English vocabulary in rural senior high school on students’ vocabulary learning strategies?2)What are the effects of applying the contextual teaching method in teaching English vocabulary in rural senior high school on students’ vocabulary learning achievements?This study used different vocabulary teaching methods to conduct an experimental study on 110 senior high school students from Xiahe Middle School in Xiahe County,Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture,Gansu Province,the author used two major research instruments English vocabulary tests and questionnaire during the experiment.Before the experiment,the author administered a vocabulary pretest to two classes,next distributed questionnaires in the experimental class to understand students’ use of vocabulary learning strategies,and then introduced the concept of contextual teaching method and how to use context to learn vocabulary in the experimental class.After four months of vocabulary teaching,the author administered post-test to the two classes and distributed questionnaires in the experimental class to find out the students’ use of English learning strategies after using the contextual teaching method to vocabulary teaching.The author used SPSS 25.0 to conduct descriptive analysis,independent samples T-test and paired samples T-test on the vocabulary test scores of the students in the two classes before and after the experiment,the author also used Excel 2016 to analyze the results of the two questionnaire surveys in the experimental class,the final experimental results showed that: 1)Using the contextual teaching method to vocabulary instruction helped students diversify their vocabulary learning strategies,mainly in the aspect of using cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies.2)Using the contextual teaching method for vocabulary instruction,the vocabulary test scores of the experimental class improved significantly.