Practical Study On Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School Based On Cognitive Context

Under the influence of the international economicintegration, foreign languages, especially English has becomethe main means of international communication. Accordingly, inorder to adapt to the new development trend and traininternational talents in China, higher request on Englishteaching has been put forward for all levels and various kindsof schools. The senior high school English standards putforward new requirements for the teaching content and purpose,including language knowledge targets, language skills goals,learning strategies, cultural consciousness and emotionalattitude. At the same time, a qualified high school student’sEnglish vocabulary shoud reach3500. The rule is undoubtedlya new challenge for teachers and students. Traditional Englishteaching methods only consider how many words the studentsmaster;students just recite words meaning, namely basicmeanings, and ignore their connotative meanings. Suchvocabulary teaching methods can only give rise to such aconsequence: although the students grasp a lot of Englishvocabulary, they lack the deep understanding of the meaning ofvocabulary and only use words by rote.Thus the vocabularynetwork can not be formed. Students’ English learning can onlywander in the shallow level. Since the theory of context produced, people have a newunderstanding of the correct use and understanding of words inspecific language environment. Especially in the newdeveloping stage of the context theory-cognitive context,people’ understanding of the vocabulary rises to a cognitivelevel. Sperber and Wilson (1986:2001:39) in the《Relevance:Cognitive and Communication》put forward the concept ofcognitive environment, the cognitive environment here refersto the cognitive context. They think: a person’s all cognitiveenvironment is a series of facts collection that he canunderstand and perceive,which are manifest for him. In otherwords, people usually use the cognition of the internalizationof knowledge in their mind to reason. This requires thatteachers should cultivate students’ consciousness of this kindof knowledge in vocabulary teaching. In order to achieve abetter understanding of the language and communicatesmoothly,the teachers should encourage the students to use thestored knowledge and experience of their own to percep thefacts.