An Experiment On Context Theory In English Classroom Vocabulary Teaching

D.A.Wilkins (1972), a famous linguist of British said"Without grammar little can be conveyed and without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed" Therefore, English vocabulary teaching is a fundamental tache. English vocabulary teaching has long attached the attention of teachers and scholars. With the development of English teaching reform, many English teachers are investigating new teaching methodology. As means of English vocabulary teaching, contextual theories are being adopted by more and more English teachers. According to the author's teaching practice, the author makes an attempt in this thesis to investigate the application of contextual theories to English vocabulary teaching.The thesis mainly studies the vocabulary teaching through context-based approach. The study employs an experiment which lasted a semester. The following two hypotheses were examined: (1) whether teaching vocabulary in context can improve students'vocabulary long-term memorization; (2) whether teaching vocabulary in context can help students to develop their competence of vocabulary application. Subjects are 2007 freshmen from Electronic Business Department of Panjin Vocational and Technical College. The department has 150 freshmen who are divided into 5 classes. All the students take part in the pre-experiment test and two classes are picked out which have the close mean scores as the control group and the experimental group. Totally 60 students participate the experiment and each group has 30 subjects. The experimental group was taught by the researcher with the new method, while the control group received the traditional method. Pre-test and post-test were adopted to compare and measure the two groups. Multivariate analyses of the measures indicated that the experimental group did prominently better than the control group at the end of the semester. The author, therefore, conclude that the hypotheses has been proved, that is teaching vocabulary in context not only can improve students'vocabulary long-term memorization, but also can develop students'competence of vocabulary application. We can discover that new approach was prior to the traditional method in developing students'English vocabulary application ability.Teaching vocabulary in context, vocabularies are learned through context instead of being isolated. By following cognizing rules, vocabulary learning strategies and theories of context teaching, we can mobilize the initiatives and self-motivation to a rational knowledge and finally achieve the effect of vocabulary teaching and improve the competence of students'language application. To sum up, the results of the experiment indicate that the application of context theories to English vocabulary teaching is effective and feasible.