An Experimental Study On The Application Of Context Theory To High School English Vocabulary Teaching

Vocabulary teaching is a key to the success of English teaching. Although the current vocabulary teaching in high school takes up much of our time and energy, the result is not satisfactory. The traditional and mechanical vocabulary teaching affects the mastery of learnt words, the ability to guess words in the context and the form of efficient vocabulary learning strategy.In order to improve the situation, the author put forward some detailed presentation and consolidation methods, combining theories of context with vocabulalry learning. The practice follows the following principles: using linguistic context, situational context and cultural context theory; combining the direct vocabulary teaching with the indirect vocabulary teaching, paying attention to a certain communication and association. The author gave some examples of presentation and consodiation methods according to the characteristics of words. Then the author carried out a four- month comparison experiment on the 101 students from the expeimental class and controlled class, showing the feasibility of the vocabulary teaching combined with context theory. In the experiment, the controlled class continued the traditional vocabulary teaching method, and the teacher taught words according to the word list and check regularly while the experimental class applied the context theory to the presentation and consolidation stage.The two tests at the end of the experiment show the students from the experimental class do better than the ones from the controlled class in the mastery of learned words and the ability to guess new words. The inferior students from the experimental class got more advance. Besides, the questionnaire can show the four- month experiment has a good effect on the students’ vocabulary learning strategy. Thus, we can draw the conclusion that the vocabulary teaching in high school combined with context has a good effect on the mastery of words, the ability to guess new words and the form of efficient vocabulary learning strategies.