A Study Of Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High Schools On The Basis Of Context Theory

Context is very important in English vocabulary learning and multi--level theoriesof contextualized vocabulary teaching provide the theoretical basis for vocabularyteaching and learning. However, the teachers in senior high school still use thetraditional methods to teach vocabulary. Contextualized vocabulary teaching andlearning is often neglected in senior high school English class and Pragmatic studies inthis aspect are far from enough in China. Based on the theories of context andvocabulary acquisition, the author puts forward the contextualized vocabulary teaching.This paper aims to introduce contextualized vocabulary teaching and learning intosenior high school English class.Guided by the theories of context and vocabulary teaching, the paper first reviewsthe previous researches at home and abroad. According to these previous studies, aone--semester experiment on vocabulary teaching is carried out among the two contrastclasses of senior one: one, as the experimental class, and the other, as the controlledclass. In the experimental class, the contextual theory is applied to the whole Process ofvocabulary teaching, including presentation and consolidation of the word learning,while in the controlled class, the traditional teaching is employed as the norm. Thecontextualized vocabulary teaching is conducted from the following three levels:vocabulary context, grammar context and situational context.In the experiment, two comprehending tests are conducted and the data arestatistically analyzed. The results of the experiment show that the contextualizedvocabulary teaching method has positive impact on students’ abilities to guess words incontext; there is different efficiency between learners with different English levels inguessing words in context, all of whom are influenced by the new method. Finally,some teaching suggestions are given about contextualized English vocabulary teachingin senior high schools.