An Application Of The Situational Method To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

As one of three elements of a language,vocabulary plays a key role in the process of language learning.Vocabulary teaching has an essential place in English teaching.However,the current situation of English vocabulary teaching is not optimistic.The teacher overemphasizes students' mastering of a single word in isolation.Students have difficulty in memorizing words and using them in a specific context.As a result,students have a negative attitude towards English vocabulary learning.According to core qualities,scholars put forward that knowledge learning should blend in the context.In addition,teaching design should be connected with situation.In view of the current situation above,this study tries to apply the situational method to English vocabulary teaching.The theoretical base of the situational method is constructivist learning theory and situated cognition theory.The situational method is a teaching method that the teacher creates specific scenes and atmosphere according to the teaching objectives so as to arouse students' emotional experience;help students to understand learning contents quickly and accurately and improve students' learning efficiency.Through analyzing and summarizing the study in this field,it is not difficult to find that previous studies focus on principles and methods to teach English vocabulary under the situational method and there is seldom empirical study.Hence,the author thought it would be worth conducting this study.This study is an empirical study,aiming to explore the effects of the application of the situational method to English vocabulary class.The author conducted a teaching experiment in a senior high school in Longgang District,Shenzhen.Two parallel classes with the same English proficiency in grade one are selected as the experimental class and control class respectively.The teaching experiment lasted for seventeen's week.The research process can be divided into three stages:preparation stage,implementation stage and post-implementation stage.In the preparation stage,the author analyzed the data from vocabulary scores of the pre-test.The result shows that there is no significant difference on students' vocabulary ability between the two classes.After that,students in the experimental class were asked to fill in the questionnaire on English vocabulary learning attitude and method.During the implementation stage,the experimental class was taught with the situational method and the control class was taught with the traditional teaching method.There is no difference on the teaching content,teaching process,teaching facilities and the teacher between the two classes.In the post-implementation stage,all the students from the two classes should take part in the post-test.In addition,students in the experimental class need to fill in the same questionnaire and the author interviewed some students from experimental class.The author used the SPSS20.0 software to analyze the data of the tests and questionnaires and recorded the process of the interview.The results indicate that the vocabulary ability of the students in the experimental class improved significantly after the experiment.Besides,the vocabulary learning attitude and method of students in the experimental class improved greatly after the experiment.The first finding from the study indicated that students' vocabulary ability in the experimental class improved a lot after the experiment,in particular on vocabulary size and vocabulary application in discourse.The second finding from the study reflected that the situational method influence senior high school students' vocabulary learning in the aspects of vocabulary learning attitude and vocabulary learning method.When the situational method was adopted,interesting and familiar situations were created for students to understand and memorize the vocabulary;various and plenty of activities were conducted for students to practice the vocabulary they learned.It was no wonder that students' attitude towards English vocabulary learning was improved and students'vocabulary learning method was cultivated under the situational method.At last,the author offered some suggestions for teachers to improve senior school students' English vocabulary learning under the situational method according to the teaching experiment.