An Experimental Study Of The English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High Schools From The Perspective Of Context Theory

Vocabulary,as one of the five elements of language knowledge(pronunciation,vocabulary,grammar,function and topic)is regarded as the foundation of a language.The repertoire of vocabulary has a close relation with learners’ communicative competence.However,vocabulary teaching is poorly managed in senior high schools in China.In recent years,some experts and teachers have been exploring new methods of vocabulary teaching.Many of them are committed to the application of Context Theory to vocabulary teaching.However,most of them just pay attention to the stage of presenting new words in the teaching process,and neglect the stage of consolidating new words.This thesis mainly explores applying Context Theory in both the presentation and consolidation stage of vocabulary teaching.The following two hypotheses are tested:Context-based vocabulary teaching can improve students’ ability of using vocabulary learning strategies.Context-based vocabulary teaching can effectively improve the students’ competence of vocabulary application in writing.The subjects of this experiment are 96 students from two classes of Grade Ten in Nineteenth High School in Xingtai.Context-based vocabulary teaching is adopted in EC(the Experimental Class),while traditional vocabulary teaching is carried out in CC(the Control Class).The experiment lasts for one semester.Data is collected by quantitative and qualitative methods from tests,questionnaires and an interview.Then they are analyzed by SPSS 17.0.The results indicate that the scores of the Experimental Class,in which vocabulary is taught with the context-based method,are much higher than those of the Control Class.The study suggests that context-based vocabulary teaching can improve students’ ability of using vocabulary learning strategies.In addition,context-based vocabulary teaching can effectively improve students’ competence of vocabulary application.