An Experimental Study On The Effects Of Context-based Lexical Inferencing On High School Students' English Vocabulary Acquisition

When students are faced with an unfamiliar English text, the first challenge seems to be its vocabulary. So, Chinese teachers of English find it difficult to input vocabulary effectively for the learners to take in and retrieve quickly for use from their long-term memory. Among the methods much recognized and used by learners,dictionary-consulting is a common practice of purposeful vocabulary learning in and out of English classroom, while context-based lexical inferencing is an incidental method recommended by some researchers as having positive effects.Considering the problems the teachers and students have and the research gap left by previous relevant studies, the author attempted to conduct an experimental study to testify if context-based lexical inferencing training contributes more to high school students' long-term memory of English vocabulary and vocabulary use than dictionary-consulting training. The thesis of the research is supported by theories of context and levels-of-processing effect, and may contribute to their interpretation and application if verified is postulated.70 students of Grade 11 in two classes in a high school in Shanwei City were selected as the subjects in this study. A Vocabulary Size Test developed by Xing Dongfang International Training Centre and the English scores of final examination in the Grade 10 were employed to measure the learners' vocabulary size and English proficiency level at the inception of the training. 10 new words in each unit were selected as the target words under observation, and students in the Experimental Class were trained by context-based lexical inferencing to learn new words, while students in the Control Class were trained by the method of dictionary-consulting.During the experiment, all the students were asked to take the delayed-tests which consist of a dictation-test, a matching-test and sentence-making-test two weeks after they finished learning each unit. Meanwhile, after 17 weeks' training, all the data of delayed-tests were analyzed with independent samples t-test. The results showed that the students' scores in Experimental Class were higher than those in the Control Class and there was significant difference between the results.From the findings, we may infer that context-based lexical inferencing training contributes more to high school students' long-term memory of English vocabulary and vocabulary use than dictionary-consulting training.This research implicates that demanding tasks like lexical inferencing can stimulate students' interest and initiatives in English learning; teachers should design the activities which can fully tap learners' cognitive potential. Moreover, context counts a great deal in foreign language learning and teaching, it's the essential element to guarantee meaningful usage-based learning.