An Empirical Research On Applying Context Theories To Teaching English Vocabulary In Senior One

Vocabulary takes a crucial part in the process of language acquisition,being one of the most important element of a language.Leaning English vocabulary has been laid much emphasis by scholars and experts ever since.Though English teachers also have attached much importance to teaching vocabulary,the methods adopted have brought about low efficiency and proficiency of students' language acquisition because of the isolation from context.So studies on teaching vocabulary based on context theory have come into existence.But many of them are closely related to teaching in colleges or universities,and researches relevant to teaching vocabulary based on context theories in senior high are in minority.Some of the previous studies have ignored the fact that students in senior high consider it challenging to acquire and apply the contextual clues proficiently.Thus this empirical research is intended to address this problem,with the help of word guessing strategy,so as to testify the feasibility of applying context theories to teaching English vocabulary in senior one.In this research,on the basis of context theories,the researcher attempts to apply the word guessing techniques and strategies related to contextual clues step by step to English vocabulary teaching.During this process,the disciplines of students' cognitive development will be taken into account.The researcher seeks to explore the following questions:1.What effects does the application of context theories exert upon senior one students' English vocabulary learning?2.Can the application of context theories improve students' English vocabulary level?In order to figure out the questions listed above,the researcher conducted an experiment in Xinyi NO.3 Middle School,in which 101 students were chosen to participate.Before being trained differently,subjects were almost equivalent to each other in English proficiency.The subjects in controlled class received traditional vocabulary teaching while subjects in experimental class were taught vocabulary by applying context theories progressively for nearly three months.Eventually,through theanalyses and discussions of the experimental results,conclusions were drawn that the application of context theories to teaching English vocabulary exerts positive effects on students' lexical learning and that lifted student's interest in lexical learning and that it improved students' vocabulary level.To be exact,the application of context theories lifted their interest in lexical learning and remodeled their attitude towards it.In the end of this thesis,not only is a summary of implications obtained from the implement made,but also the inadequacy of the research is pointed out.