A Study On The Application Of Situational Teaching Method To English Vocabulary Teaching In Junior High Schools

English vocabulary is the foundation of English language knowledge and the smallest meaningful unit of language learning.However,from the current situation of English vocabulary teaching,there are some problems that have been bothering teachers and students.For example,classroom vocabulary teaching is inefficient.Students find it difficult to memorize vocabulary and the frequency of words forgetting is high.In view of this situation,each language school has put forward its own vocabulary teaching method from different perspectives of cognitive psychology,second language acquisition theory,cognitive linguistics and so on,which includes vocabulary situational teaching method.Reviewing the researches of English vocabulary situational teaching at home and abroad,we can find out that the research object of English vocabulary teaching often focuses on college students,but the research on students in the basic education,particularly on students in junior high schools,is not enough.Accordingly,on the basis of summarizing previous researches and experimental conclusions,this research attempts to discuss the effect of situational teaching method on English vocabulary teaching in junior high school and answer the following questions: 1)What is the current situation of the application of situational teaching method? 2)What are students' attitudes towards situational learning of English vocabulary? 3)What effects does situational teaching method have on the vocabulary achievements of students?In order to answer the questions mentioned above,the author conducted a one-semester investigation.First of all,we chose 78 students as subjects who had the similar language level from two classes in Wu Jiang junior high school which is located in Maanshan,Anhui province to carry out an experimental research including pre-test and post-test.The control class adopted the traditional teaching method while the experimental class adopted the situational teaching method.Through collecting,processing,comparing and analyzing the data from the experiment,the effect ofsituational teaching method on vocabulary teaching was explored.The results of data analysis showed that:First of all,the application of situational teaching method was not very common.Only younger teachers had the tendency to apply it to teaching.Secondly,students didn't adapt to the situational teaching method at the beginning of the experiment because they had received the traditional teaching for a long time.However,after the experiment,students were willing to accept situational teaching and held that situational teaching method could help to stimulate their interest in learning English and enhance their self-confidence in learning.What's more,situational teaching method had a positive impact on the improvement of students' English vocabulary achievements.It had significant advantages over traditional teaching method.