A Study Of Teaching Predicate Verbs Via Context

Vocabulary study plays an important role in English learning at high school. Without sufficient vocabulary, students cannot be successful in English language learning. Verbs are very important in English vocabulary. Compared with other parts of speech of words, verbs are a complicated part of speech. Some verbs of high frequency have more than one meaning and have a lot of collocations. As a result, some senior middle school students have difficulty in learning verbs. Too much time and energy have been spent in verb learning, but the efficiency is still very low. All can be attributed to the traditional methods of vocabulary teaching to some extent, including verb teaching. Efficiency in vocabulary learning and teaching has become urgent. To our delight, English teachers begin to focus their attention on new methods in vocabulary teaching with the higher requirement of English curriculum. In view of the important roles of verbs in English vocabulary, the author of this thesis puts forward the comparatively new method of verb teaching via context.The concept of context was first put forward by Polish anthropologist Malinowski. In the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century, linguists began to combine context theory with vocabulary teaching. Under the inspiration of the research by linguists at home and abroad, the author focuses her study on how to apply context to verb teaching and learning to help students with their memory of verbs.The characteristics of this paper is that the author uses many different materials as context in presenting verbs or phrasal verbs, such as listening to English songs, watching films and so on. Students learn the meanings and usages of verbs via context. The method is communicative and associative, and can arouse students’ interest in verb learning to improve the efficiency.The author used the traditional method in teaching new verbs in the control class. And at the same time, students in the experimental class learned the words with the help of the context. After the experiment, the author gave the two classes a vocabulary test and analyzed the results with the aid of SPSS 17.0. The results of the analysis indicate that context can contribute to students’ learning of new verbs.At the end of the thesis, the author gives some suggestions on verb teaching according to her research, that is, teachers should create really genuine context in presenting words to stimulate students’ interest in learning vocabulary. Teachers should increase understandable language input and create more opportunities for students to perceive English.