A Study Of The Effect Of Context Cue Instruction On Vocabulary Acquisition Among Senior Middle School Students

The present study is an empirical investigation of the effect of context cue instruction on vocabulary acquisition among senior middle school students. Vocabulary is the foundation of language learning and plays an essential role in language acquisition. According to English Curriculum Standards for Senior Middle Schools issued by Ministry of Education in2011, the amount of reading of senior middle school students have to reach230,000words except that in textbooks. It is certain that they will come across unknown words when they read. The present study puts forward two research questions to test the effect of context cue instruction on vocabulary acquisition in the hope of searching an effective learning strategy to help students to deal with unknown words in text. The research questions are as follows:1) How well does the context cue instruction affect vocabulary acquisition among senior middle school students?2) Does the context cue instruction improve reading competence of senior middle school students?The present study is made up of an experimental study based on pretests and posttests.70Senior One students from two ordinary classes participate in the present study. The two classes have comparable English performance in their mid-term examination, which is the latest exam before the present study begins. One class of33students is randomly chosen to be control class and the other class of37students to be experimental class. In the first week of the experiment, a pretest is taken in both classes at the same time. From week2to week5, a treatment of context cue instruction is conducted in the experimental class. In the sixth week, a posttest, which has the same structure as the pretest, is taken in the two classes at the same time. The papers of pretest and posttest are scored by the researcher alone so as to assure the reliability of the criterion of scoring.Data collected from the experiment is analyzed by Independent Samples T-test and Paired Samples T-test in SPSS19.0. The results indicate that the treatment of context cue instruction has significant positive effect on vocabulary acquisition and reading competence among senior middle school students. The significance of the present study is to provide an effective vocabulary acquisition strategy for English teaching and learning in middle schools.The limitations of the present study and suggestions for further studies are included.