The Effects Of Implicit-explicit Vocabulary Instruction For High School Students Guided By Context Theory

Vocabulary learning is of great importance to language learners.Therefore,the English Curriculum Standards(2011)not only strengthens the requirement of vocabulary size,but also emphasizes that the vocabulary learning should be combined with context to improve the flexibility and appropriateness of vocabulary use.However,the high school English teachers tend to teach vocabulary via wordlist,in which words are isolated from the context.This decontextualized vocabulary teaching severely affects the effects of vocabulary teaching and learning.Many high school students can neither understand meaning of the vocabulary properly nor can they use them flexibly.Then how to address these problems?There exist two main representative approaches,namely,implicit vocabulary teaching and explicit vocabulary teaching.Recently,many researchers have found that the integration of implicit and explicit vocabulary teaching is more effective.Thus,this thesis attempts to adopt the "implicit-explicit" vocabulary teaching method on the basis of the Level of Processing Theory and implement it with the guidance of Context Theory.In order to verify its effectiveness and feasibility,a three month experimental study is conducted.The "implicit-explicit" vocabulary teaching method is employed in the experimental class,while the traditional teaching pattern is used in the control class.Through the analysis of scores after the experiment,the two questionnaires' results and students'interviews results,the thesis concludes that the "implicit-explicit" vocabulary teaching contributes to improving the vocabulary ability and developing their interest in vocabulary learning and learning strategies,though it has little effects on memoryThis study not only helps teachers realize the importance of contextualized vocabulary teaching,but also has a great guiding effect on English vocabulary teaching in Senior High School practically.