The Application Of Context Theory To Vocabulary Teaching In Junior Middle School

Vocabulary is one of the important components of the language. For a foreign language learner, no matter how pure his pronunciation is, how good his grammar is, without vocabulary, he can not express anything. So, vocabulary plays an important part in foreign language acquisition and teaching.In current junior English teaching practice, vocabulary is the most difficult part for both teachers and students. The students spend a lot of time in remembering new words. However, they can not use the words correctly in their writing. The low scores in the exam discourage them. They have no interest in learning English. Actually, most students are struggling on the verge of word remembering. English is so difficult for them. The reason for this is that most teachers do not attach importance to vocabulary teaching. They spend plenty of time dealing with grammar and exercises. They teach vocabulary according to the vocabulary list in the text book. That is, the teacher speaks the Chinese and asks students to pronounce the words by looking at the phonetic symbols. If their pronunciation is wrong, the teacher tries to correct their pronunciation by asking them to follow her / him. Then, they move on to the next new word. The whole process has nothing to do with some specific contexts, so the embarrassing situation mentioned above comes out.Fortunately, some researchers and teachers have realized the problem in junior English vocabulary teaching. They proposed that vocabulary should be taught in context. However, they did not give us some specific measures. So, the author of the thesis tries exploring an approach to teach vocabulary in context. In the thesis, the author raised two research questions: 1. Can teaching vocabulary in contexts improve students? interest in vocabulary learning and have a positive effect on the cultivation of students’ vocabulary learning strategies. 2. Is teaching vocabulary in contexts good for developing students? competence of vocabulary application?In order to test the two hypotheses, an experiment was carried out. The subjects come from the two classes which are taught by the author. Class 31 is chosen as the experimental class and Class 32 is the control class. There are altogether 93 students taking part in the experiment. In the control class, the traditional approach of teaching vocabulary is adopted. While in the experimental class, the author guides the students to acquire and memorize new words through contexts. To make the experiment accurate and reliable, two questionnaires are done to make a survey on the students? concept and strategies of vocabulary learning before and after the research. Two vocabulary tests are given to make a comparison about the students? competence of vocabulary learning before and after the training. After the data collection and analysis, the researcher finds that through the period of training, the students? interest and strategies of vocabulary learning have changed a lot. They begin to learn the vocabulary in context. The two vocabulary tests indicate that the students? vocabulary application competence in the experimental class is higher than that of the control class. Therefore, the researcher gets the following conclusion. That is, teaching vocabulary in context can improve the students? interest of vocabulary learning and has a positive influence on the students? vocabulary learning strategies; the application of context theory to vocabulary teaching in junior middle school can improve the students? competence of vocabulary learning.Through the thesis, the author would like to arouse the junior middle school English teachers? awareness of teaching vocabulary in context so that our students can master English well.