College English Vocabulary Teaching On The Basis Of Cultural Context

Language is a special phenomenon of culture, and culture influences the creation and development of language to some extent. As the most basic unit of language, vocabulary is closely related to culture. Besides its conceptual meaning, vocabulary carries the rich cultural connotation as well. As language learners, besides the pronunciation, spelling and meaning of vocabulary, students are also supposed to grasp the cultural information carried by vocabulary.The purpose of this study is to explore the positive influence of cultural context on college English vocabulary teaching and improve students’ ability of understanding and applying vocabulary. On the basis of the investigation on the current vocabulary teaching in Taishan University where the author is working, two questions were raised.(1) Will teaching vocabulary in cultural context help students improve their ability to understand and memorize words?(2) Will teaching vocabulary in cultural context help students develop their ability to use words?The author adopted two different vocabulary teaching approaches (traditional vocabulary teaching and vocabulary teaching under the perspective of cultural context) to explore the effect of vocabulary teaching in cultural context on students vocabulary acquisition. The subjects of the study were 90 freshmen from Taishan University. They were divided into experimental group and control group. Instruments used in the study included questionnaires for both students and teachers, and two vocabulary tests before and after the experiment. The questionnaire for teachers aimed to investigate the current situation of vocabulary teaching in Taishan University as well as teachers’ attitude towards applying the theory of cultural context to vocabulary teaching. The purpose of students’ questionnaire was to know students’ attitude towards English learning, cultural background information and vocabulary learning, and also their difficulties encountered in vocabulary learning. The data collected were described. Independent samples t-test and paired t-test were used to examine the effect of the experiment.The results of the study indicated that (1) judging from the scores, both control group students and experimental group students had made some progress relatively; (2) seen from the data analysis, the scores of experimental group students showed remarkable improvement either in memorizing and understanding words or in applying words, while there was no significant change in the achievement of control group students.According to the analysis of experimental results, the author puts forward some suggestions on vocabulary teaching in cultural context. As language teachers, we should spare no effort to explore new methods of vocabulary teaching and arouse students’ interest in vocabulary learning. At the same time, the limitation of the study and the potential guidance for further study are also pointed out at the end of the thesis.