A Research On The Application Of Cultural Schema Theory To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

Vocabulary plays an important role in English teaching. Currently, a lot of teachers have realized the importance of vocabulary teaching, but they have not found out the effective methods. Furthermore, the situation of students’ vocabulary learning in senior high school still remains unsatisfactory. Therefore, how to improve the effectiveness of vocabulary teaching is a big problem to be solved.Schema theory was introduced to language teaching in the 1970 s. From then on, the researchers have taken great pains to apply this theory to language teaching. Although schema theory has been widely applied to translation and reading comprehension teaching,researchers have paid little attention to its application in vocabulary teaching. With the development of inter-cultural communication, more and more students recognize the significance of inter-cultural communication. However, when the students communicate with the foreigners, they find that culture-loaded vocabulary easily brings the misunderstanding. Therefore, most students’ competence of inter-cultural communication is far from satisfactory. Cultural schema may be regarded as an effective method to solve the problem. Cultural schema is an important part of schema theory. It can help students overcome the cultural obstacles and improve their vocabulary learning. Therefore,cultural schema theory may be applied to English vocabulary teaching in senior high school.This research is to find out:(1) Whether the teaching method based on cultural schema theory have better teaching effect on English vocabulary teaching?(2) Can the teaching method based on cultural schema theory arouse students’ vocabulary learning interest?(3) How does the teacher apply cultural schema theory to vocabulary teaching?This research has adopted the combination of the methods of questionnaire, test and interview. The research is conducted in NO.1 Middle School in Ganzhou. Two classes are chosen from this school. One is the experimental class while the other is the control class.The students of two classes are in Senior Grade Two. Before the experiment, the students’ basic information of vocabulary learning is surveyed by the questionnaire. Meanwhile, all the students take a pre-test. The result of pre-test indicates that before the experiment, thevocabulary level of two classes is close. Then, different teaching methods are applied to vocabulary teaching of the two classes. The vocabulary teaching method based on cultural schema theory is used in the experimental class. The traditional teaching method is applied to vocabulary teaching in the control class. Four months later, a post-test is used to check whether the students’ achievements in the experimental class are much better than those in the control class or not. 25 students in the experimental class are interviewed in order to know more information about the effect of teaching method based on cultural schema theory on vocabulary teaching. The results of two tests are analyzed by SPSS 17.0.After analysis of the research results, three major findings are concluded: 1. The vocabulary teaching method based on cultural schema theory is more effective in improving of students’ vocabulary learning; 2. This new teaching method can also arouse students’ interest in vocabulary learning; 3. Three measures based on cultural schema theory are helpful in English vocabulary teaching in senior high school.At last, the thesis mentions the implications, and the limitations of the research and suggestions for further research are offered.