The Application Of Context Theory To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

Vocabulary is the core and the base of language learning. Only students master an amount of vocabulary can they communicate with others fluently and improve their speaking ability. For students, they are devoid of the real language environment for foreign language learning. Most of them just recite words in mechanical way and they cannot use them properly in specific situations. Teachers often use traditional way to teach vocabulary, which makes students not interested in it. Students consider learning words as a task to finish and the learning effect is not well.Application of context theory can provide authentic language learning environment for students in class. Words shown on the real situations, students can understand them easily according to some contextual clues and combine with their life experience and background knowledge. There are many words in senior one with different meanings in different contexts. The vocabulary lists simply list the meaning of words, and students cannot grasp the specific usages of words correctly. Therefore, words should be presented in specific language contexts. In the research, the author adopts most scholars’ classification of contexts, which are divided into linguistic context, situational context and cultural context. Guidance and practice are given to students for vocabulary learning according to the three aspects. The research mainly focuses on the application of linguistic context, which helps students grasp guessing words skills and guides them to memorize and use words in the contexts.The research uses questionnaire surveys and vocabulary tests. The students of two classes are selected from Tong Zhou senior school in Da Li, and the total is 81.Class one is as the experimental class with 36 students and Class two with 45 students is as the controlled class. According to the vocabulary results of pretest, the means of two classes are 51.53 and 50.56, from which we know that the English level of two classes are almost same. During the experiment, the author applies the context theory to vocabulary teaching in the experimental class to guide students to master words according to the context clues. Conversely, the controlled class is taught by another teacher, who uses the traditional vocabulary teaching method. After 10 weeks of training in vocabulary, the experimental statistics and analysis data have been done. The results of empirical research show that teaching English vocabulary by context theory, most students’ concepts and attitudes have been changed and students’ interests in vocabulary has been significantly enhanced in the experimental class. About vocabulary tests of the two classes, the posttest has shown that the means of two classes are 51.53 and 62.91, from which we kown that students’ vocabulary grades in experimental class have increased largely than before and students’ ability in memorizing and using words has been improved.In conclusion, the author puts forward some suggestions form the research and has a further understanding of this vocabulary teaching method that needs a higher request for teachers. The selected materials should be closed to students’ real life, including sentences, paragraphs and articles. Showing plentiful contexts guides students to learn vocabulary actively both in meanings and usages. As time is limited, the results of the research lack universality and need a further study. Application of context theory in vocabulary teaching in foreign language learning has great advantages and values in study, which needs further exploration in order to apply the context theory in English teaching or some broader subjects.