The Application Of Context Theory In English Vocabulary Teaching In Junior Middle School In The Frame Of New Curriculum Criteria

Vocabulary is one of the three components of language. For a language learner, no matter how good your pronunciation is, how perfect your grammar is, without vocabulary, nothing can be expressed. Therefore, the role that vocabulary plays in the foreign language acquisition and foreign language teaching is doubtless.Quality-oriented new Curriculum Criteria put forth higher requirement and attach more attention to vocabulary. It highlights the important role of vocabulary teaching in middle school English teaching. However, through the survey of the present situation of vocabulary teaching in junior middle school in the way of interview, questionnaire, observing classes, etc, the author discovered that there still exist many problems in vocabulary teaching in junior middle school, such as old teaching method, boring teacher-centered vocabulary class, teachers'neglect to the context knowledge, teaching vocabulary out of context and ignoring the instruction and cultivation of the learning strategy; students lose interests in vocabulary learning, vocabulary has become their burden, and most of the students only know the meaning of the words, but they do not know how to use them in practice. The present situation of English vocabulary teaching is far from the higher requirement of the new Curriculum Criteria on vocabulary. Furthermore, the more important thing is that junior middle school is a basic stage for English learning. It is very crucial for students to grasp an effective learning method, develop a good learning habit and lay solid foundation for their future study. Therefore, it appears to be much more significant and urgent to explore a practical, scientific and effective vocabulary teaching approach to improve vocabulary teaching in junior middle school.These years, some scholars and English teachers have engaged in studying the application of context theory in English vocabulary teaching. However, most of them focus on the application of context theory in college English or senior middle school English. The researches on applying context theory in junior middle school, a very foundational stage, are paid less attention to. In line with the new Curriculum Criteria, aiming at exploring an effective vocabulary teaching approach which can be suitable for the age and the feature of junior middle school students, this thesis concentrates on applying context theory in vocabulary teaching in junior middle school to reach the higher requirement of the new Curriculum Criteria on vocabulary. In order to put the theory in use, the author carried out an experiment to test the feasibility and validity of the application of context theory in vocabulary teaching in junior middle school. The following two hypotheses are examined: 1. Whether context-based approach of vocabulary teaching can activate students'interest in vocabulary learning and better students'learning strategy on vocabulary? 2. Whether teaching vocabulary in context can enlighten the students to improve their competence of vocabulary application?During the ten weeks experiment, two questionnaires and two vocabulary tests were given to the students. The results indicate that students'post-test results of experiment class are improved greatly compared with that in the pretest. Besides, both the passing rate and the average score of the experiment class are much higher than those of control class. It shows that teaching vocabulary in context is able to contribute to improving students'competence of vocabulary application. In addition, teaching vocabulary in context is beneficial to activating students'interest in vocabulary learning and bettering students'vocabulary learning strategy. All of these prove that the approach of applying context theory in vocabulary teaching in junior middle school is practical and effective.