An Application Of Culture Context Theory On Senior English Vocabulary Teaching

Language reflects the society and conveys important connotation of culture, whereas vocabulary is the most essential part of the language as well as an important part in Second Language Teaching. Modern linguistic studies go to show that learning foreign languages does not only need to learn linguistic knowledge and skills but also have to get rid of culture barriers among languages. Some words have connotative meaning in addition to their conceptual meaning because of the geographical factors, customs, religious beliefs, values and social systems. Learners have to turn to linguist context and non-linguistic for help if they want to know the exact meaning of English expressions. Therefore teachers should pay much attention to the culture context which is an important part of non-linguistic context. Most present studies of Second Language Acquisition focus on the formation and rules for teaching words, and culture context has not been discussed systematically.The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the application of culture context on English vocabulary teaching so as to make students improve their abilities to understand and apply words. In addition, this thesis also wants students to have a good knowledge of foreign culture hence cultivate their awareness of intercultural communication.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is introduction which contains background and significance of the study. The second chapter is literature review in which the author introduces many schools of context and theory at home and abroad and analyzes the relationship between word meaning and culture so as to stress on the importance of culture context in vocabulary teaching. The third chapter is the empirical study lasted for twelve weeks trying to testify the feasibility and effectiveness of culture context on English vocabulary teaching. The author chose two classes as control class and experimental class respectively in Bazhou No.1Middle School in Xinjiang. Furthermore, three hypotheses the author mentioned in the following chapter need to be testified. Firstly, students are interested in English vocabulary learning when culture context theory is applied in vocabulary teaching. Secondly, the application of cultural context theory in teaching English vocabulary can improve students’efficiency in learning new vocabulary. In addition, the awareness of intercultural communication can be raised through culture context in the process of English vocabulary teaching. The author first used a survey study which was conducted on the ninety students and ten English teachers. Afterwards a pre-test and a post-test were employed for students to testify the advantages of culture context in vocabulary teaching. In the fourth chapter, the author used the SPSS19.0to analyze and discuss the results hence arrive at a conclusion that the application of culture context does have a positive effect on English vocabulary teaching. In the last chapter, the author drew a conclusion and put forward some available suggestions on English vocabulary teaching in senior middle school.