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

The New Curriculum Criteria based on the quality-oriented cultivation puts forward higher need to vocabulary and it stresses the crucial role of vocabulary teaching in senior high school English teaching. Foreign language learners have little chance to improve their comprehensive ability of English application as well as the communication ability without learning vocabulary.However, by interviewing teachers and learners, handing out questionnaires to the students, taking notes in the English class the author conducted a survey which shows that there are still many problems about the current situation of English vocabulary teaching in senior high school: learners tending to forget words easily, learners using words inappropriately; teachers’ neglect of the context knowledge and lack of the attention to the context; teachers’ teaching vocabulary out of context; teachers’ paying little attention to instruct and better students’ learning strategy. Therefore, to find an effective method of vocabulary teaching is extremely important in order to change the current situation.This paper aims to explore a suitable and effective English teaching method for learners with the guidance of Context theory and to meet the requirements of the New Curriculum Criteria as well as reach a good teaching effect. Context refers to the environment of language usage. It can be mainly divided into linguistic context and non-linguistic context; the linguistic context mainly includes the verbal context, the grammatical context and the lexical context; well the non-linguistic context mainly includes the situational context and the cultural context.In order to testify the feasibility of context in vocabulary teaching, the author carried out an experiment and answered the two questions: 1. Can the students’ interest in English be aroused and their learning strategies be improved with the guidance of Context Theory in the teaching process? 2. Can the students’ ability of English vocabulary application be fostered and improved?The author had conducted a comparative experimental research for 16 weeks in the internship school, during the research, students were tested twice: one test taken before the experiment, students were asked to complete a questionnaire and take a vocabulary test; the other test was given after the experiment. From the test results, the author finds that students in the experiment class have made much progress considering the vocabulary application aspect, which indicates that teaching vocabulary with the guidance of Context Theory is helpful to arouse students’ interest and to optimize the vocabulary learning strategies. Besides, teaching based on the context can improve the students’ ability of English vocabulary application. Therefore, vocabulary teaching method based on context is more effective than the traditional ways.