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

The National English Curriculum Standards(2011)requires students to have a command of the prescribed words and phrases,as well as to learn to use them in appropriate contexts.However,under the normal teaching approach,students often memorize words by mechanical memory or by repetition,but they don't know how to use them appropriatly.In the 1960 s and 1970 s,linguist Linguist Brown began to study the relationship between context and vocabulary teaching.The use of context theory for vocabulary teaching can not only improve the efficiency of vocabulary teaching,but also improve students' vocabulary application ability.Therefore,based on context theory and constructivism theory,this paper explores how to apply context theory to junior high school English vocabulary teaching practice,hoping to provide some reference for future researchers and front-line teachers.This study is expected to answer the following questions:(1)What is the influence of vocabulary teaching based on context theory on students' vocabulary test scores?(2)Which group of students with different academic levels are most affected by vocabulary teaching based on context theory?This study used test papers and interview as research instruments and 89 students from the second grade of Yining No.7 Middle School were selected as the subjects.They are two parallel classes,class 7 and class 10.And then a 12-week experiment was conducted.According to Nation's context-based vocabulary teaching mode,follow these three steps: first create context and present new vocabulary to students,second the teacher explain the meaning and usage of words in context to help students understand and master words,third the students summarize the usage and collocation of vocabulary to teach vocabulary in the experimental class,guiding students to learn and master new vocabulary,while those in the control class are taught by normal vocabulary teaching mode.The researcher tested the difference between the two vocabulary teaching modes through teaching experiments and pre-test and post-test comparison analysis,and then used SPSS23.0 to make statistical analysis of the experimental data.In order to fully supplement and verify the experimental conclusions,15 students were interviewed by the author in the experimental class after the experiment,and summarized the interview results immediately after the interview.The experimental results showed that:(1)According to the post-test results of the vocabulary test paper,it can be concluded that vocabulary teaching based on context theory can improve students' scores.(2)According to the comparative analysis of different academic level groups in the pre-test and post-test of the experimental class,it is concluded that the middle-level students are most affected by vocabulary teaching based on context theory.The results of the study suggests that in the vocabulary teaching process we should create different appropriate contexts according to different vocabularies to arouse students' interest,let students master the specific usage of words in different contexts,and improve students' vocabulary application ability.In addition,when using the vocabulary teaching approach of context theory,teachers could pay attention to individual differences and assign different tasks to students of different academic level groups,and improve the overall vocabulary learning level of the class.