A Research Of Learning Strategies In Junior Middle School Vocabulary Teaching Based On Context Theory

As is known to all, sound, vocabulary and grammar are three essential elementsof a language. Among them, vocabulary is the dominant one. Without vocabulary, wecan’t express ourselves or communicate with others. If we say that English teaching isa tall building, then the vocabulary should be the bricks; if the English teaching is abig tree, then the vocabulary should be the root. Therefore, the role that vocabularyplays in the foreign language acquisition and foreign language teaching is doubtless.For a language learner, no matter how good your pronunciation is, how perfect yourgrammar is, without vocabulary, nothing can be expressed.Context is the environment in which language is used and by which languageconveys its real sense. Combined the characteristics of the language teaching, contextcan be divided into linguistic context and non-linguistic context. Linguistic contextrefers to the words, clauses, sentences in which a word appears and it may also covera paragraph, a whole chapter and even the entire book. Non-linguistic context refersto all the factors relevant to the understanding of a word, a certain word may conveydifferent meanings by means of situational context. As Lu ShuXiang once said, onlyin a certain context can a word be meaningful. According to the context clues, wordscan be guessed and people can easily get the meaning and use of them.Junior middle school is a basic stage for English learning, which is very crucialfor students to grasp an effective learning strategy, develop a good learning habit andlay solid foundation for their future study. Therefore, it appears to be much moresignificant and urgent to explore a scientific and effective vocabulary teachingapproach to improve vocabulary teaching in junior middle school. To deal with thissituation, some scholars and English teachers have engaged in making research intothe application of context theory in English vocabulary teaching. However, most ofthem focus on the application of context theory in college English or senior middleschool English. The researches on applying context theory in junior middle school arelimited. This paper, aims at helping students explore an effective vocabulary learning method which can be suitable for themselves. In this research, the following twohypotheses are examined: 1.Whether teaching vocabulary in context can improve thestudents’interest in vocabulary learning and has a positive influence on developingthe students’vocabulary learning strategy? 2. Whether teaching vocabulary in contextis helpful in enlarging students’vocabulary and developing students’competence ofvocabulary application?During the twelve- week experiment, two questionnaires and two vocabularytests were given to students in the two classes by the researcher. In the end, the resultthat is analyzed by SPSS17.0 the scores of the experimental class are improvingrapidly comparing with those in the pre-test. Meanwhile, students change theirattitudes towards English vocabulary learning and they were willing to use some newlearning strategies. Moreover, the mean scores of experimental class are much betterthan those in the control class. This result, therefore, discovers that learningvocabulary in context is more helpful to junior high school learners in improving theirvocabulary application. Moreover, it can improve the students’interest in vocabularyleaning and has a positive influence on developing their vocabulary learning strategy.All of these prove that the approach of applying context theory in vocabulary teachingin junior middle school to improve students’learning strategies is practical andeffective.