Study On The Application Of Contextualized English Vocabulary Teaching And Learning In Senior High School

Vocabulary is the basic element in language learning. As the famous linguist Wilkins, D. A.(1972) claimed: “One can express a little thing without grammar; but one can not express anything without vocabulary.” From this, we may easily find that vocabulary is the basic and necessary elements of a language. Nowadays, more and more scholars pay attention to the research on vocabulary teaching. Many English teachers also try their best to search for the effective ways of vocabulary learning in their practice of teaching.As the center stage of English language learning, English vocabulary learning contributes much to English learning. Therefore, it is paid much attention to by more and more teachers and students. It is necessary to broaden students’ quantity of vocabulary, to find an effective way of vocabulary learning and to understand the appropriate ways of using language in real communication. Through the research and observation as well as reading the literature, the writer finds that in most places of China, there exist such problems as mechanical teaching and learning, inflexible teaching ways, time wasting and having difficulty in expressing in real communicative environment and so on. Most teachers present new words by explaining words’ Chinese version from the vocabulary lists in students’ text books. Classroom teaching pays much attention to grammar rather than effectiveness of vocabulary learning. This kind of vocabulary teaching way makes students feel bored on English learning, which leads to a result of losing interest and confidence.The writer holds the view that vocabulary can not be separated from the context that the vocabulary take place in. It is more convenient for students to memorize vocabulary to put them in a certain context which is useful to avoid embarrassment of misunderstanding the meaning of a word in different contexts. The term “context” is firstly put forward by anthropologist Malinowski. He points out in his book “Meaning of Meaning” that an utterance is related to the context closely, and the language context is necessary for language comprehension.This thesis firstly reviews the researches on context in history. On the basis of explaining theoretical researches on context both abroad and at home, the writer analyzes present situation of vocabulary teaching and learning in China and discusses the application of different contexts. Then the writer does the experiment with this knowledge in two classes of senior one in Huang Yuan No. 1 middle school. There are totally 94 samples in experimental group and controlled group. The research lasts for four months to test if context is useful in improving students’ capability of vocabulary learning and to try to find the ways of using context in real classroom. The questionnaire is used to investigate students’ attitude on vocabulary learning and contextualized vocabulary teaching and learning. The pre-test aims to see if there are significant differences between two classes. The purpose of post-test is to check if the contextualized vocabulary teaching is useful to the effectiveness of students’ vocabulary learning. The result of the research shows that context is consistent with students’ cognitive ways and it is helpful to improve students’ ability of vocabulary learning. At the same time, there are still some problems in the processing of doing the research. According to these shortages, the writer puts forward some suggestions for further study.