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

English vocabulary teaching is an important part of English language teaching.In recent years,English vocabulary has not been valued highly,not because of lack of input in terms of quantity,but lack of effective teaching methods.Vocabulary is taught mechanically.The pattern of traditional method are presented as follows: the teacher reads vocabulary from the word list--students read after the teacher—student read words by themselves—the teacher explained the usage of word—making sentence with new words—students recite the words mechanically.It is easy to find that the traditional method is not satisfactory which not only neglects the use of words but also put aside learners’ role in language learning.So it is necessary to find a suitable vocabulary teaching method.The thesis aims to study vocabulary teaching based on context theory.Context consists of linguistic context and non-linguistic context.With the help of context,students can understand the words better and even they can apply the words more flexibly.Based on the context theory and according to the real situation of senior high school students,the thesis put forward two questions:(1)Can the vocabulary teaching based on context theory change students’ strategies in learning English vocabulary?(2)Can the vocabulary teaching based on context theory improve the students’ vocabulary proficiency?In order to testify the two questions,the author made a contrastive experiment for 14 weeks in Qing Yuan Senior High School in the city of Liao Ning.Two parallel classes were randomly selected as Experimental class(EC)and Control class(CC).The students in EC were taught by the method based on context theory,while students in CC were taught with traditional method.The experiment data was analyzed by SPSS 17.0.And the conclusion can be made(1)Students can make a better use of their vocabulary learning strategies to suit vocabulary learning(2)In EC,students ’ vocabulary proficiency is improved.The study proved that it was effective to teach vocabulary by the method based on context theory.Students can improve their interest in learning vocabulary and vocabulary strategies were better used,meanwhile students’ vocabulary proficiency was also improved.However,the time duration of the experiment and the number of subjects were limited.What’ more,linguisticcontext was paid more attention than non-linguistic context.So in the further research non-linguistic context should be valued highly.