Application Of Contexttheory To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High Schools

As is known to all, vocabulary learning is an important part in second languageacquisition, and vocabulary teaching constitutes a dispensable role of language teaching.The effectiveness of vocabulary teaching is directly related to the development of thelearners’ communicative competence. However, vocabulary teaching has not beenemphasized in accordance with the significance in the senior high English-teaching class,and it lacks effective vocabulary teaching method. Besides, the students do not seem todevelop their competence of applying vocabulary after memorizing a great deal of words.Context is the environment in which language is used and by which language conveysits real sense. As Lv Shuxiang (1979), a famous1inguist in China, proposed that only in acertain context words can be given life, be memorized easily and be used appropriately.Thus, it plays a crucial role in restricting and interpreting the meaning of words. And it canbe divided into1inguistic context and non-linguistic context. Linguistic context refers tothe words, clauses, sentences in which a word appears and it may also cover a paragraph, awho1e chapter and even the entire book. Non-1inguistic context refers to all the factorsrelevant to the understanding of a word, a sentence or the contents of a book but notexpressed in written form.This thesis aims at finding out the current situation of the application of contexttheories to the vocabulary teaching and learning in senior high schools. After giving a briefoverview of the related context theories and the development of vocabulary teaching bothabroad and at home, the author gives a discussion on the classifications of context and theconcept of word meaning. Then an experimental study was carried out to test how thecontext theory affected students’ vocabulary learning. During the experiment, aquestionnaire and two vocabulary tests were given to the students by the researcher. Theresult shows that learning vocabulary in context is more helpful to senior high schoolslearners in improving their vocabulary application. Moreover, it can reinforce the students’interest in vocabulary leaning and has a positive influence on developing their vocabulary learning strategy.This thesis is expected to make more English teachers realize the significance ofcontext in vocabulary acquisition so as to improve language teaching as well as promotingstudents’ communicative ability. And it also should be regarded as a useful reference forthe studies on vocabulary teaching in senior high schools in future.