A Study On The Teaching Strategies Of English Vocabulary In Senior-high School From The Perspective Of Cognitive Context

Playing an important role among the three major components of language(phonetics,grammar,and vocabulary),vocabulary is the building material as well as the smallest unit of it,which can be used independently.However,by conducting questionnaire surveys and interviews,it turns out there are still a series of problems in daily vocabulary teaching of high school.In terms of teachers,with relatively backward teaching concept,as well as simple and mechanical teaching methods,the student’s subjectivity has not been effectively exerted.In terms of students,they are still memorizing words in an isolated and mechanical way.Moreover,they lack the capability to use vocabulary appropriately.In a word,students’ English vocabulary learning is “time-consuming and inefficient”,and teacher’s teaching results are far from satisfactory.On this account,it is worth studying how to improve the effectiveness of vocabulary teaching.As a process of constructing vocabulary knowledge,cognitive context theory holds that English vocabulary learning is not a process of mastering the use of vocabularies one by one.By contrast,learners need to internalize and cognize the linguistic,situational,and cultural context on which they depend to understanding vocabulary and they are supposed to use such representations of cognitive context as schema,frame and category to promote the understanding and use of vocabulary,which has a certain enlightening effect on English vocabulary teaching.Under the guidance of cognitive context theory,the author takes 42 Englishteachers and 108 sophomores in the ×× School in Yan’an as subjects,and probes into the causes of the problems in English vocabulary teaching in senior high schools by questionnaire surveys,vocabulary test and interview.The specific operation steps are as follows: Firstly,pre-experiment stage.The vocabulary test of pre-experiment and questionnaire survey are mainly conducted in the early stage of the experiment.The aim of vocabulary test is to detect the students’ current English vocabulary level;the questionnaire survey investigate the current concepts and methods of English vocabulary teaching and learning from both teachers and students.Secondly,experimental stage.The author conducted vocabulary teaching based on cognitive context in the experimental class for three months.By combining the corresponding linguistic,situational,and cultural context in vocabulary teaching practice to promote the understanding and use of vocabularies,and by combining the three representations of cognitive context,the author proposes specific vocabulary teaching strategies to improve the effectiveness of vocabulary teaching.Thirdly,post-experiment stage.The author conducted the second vocabulary test of the experimental class and the control class,the purpose of which was to test whether the vocabulary teaching of high school under the cognitive context was effective.Meanwhile,we interviewed six students in the experimental class to understand their feelings and views on vocabulary teaching in the cognitive context.It has been proved by practice that the high school teaching strategies proposed by this research in the context of cognitive context have practical implications for changing the teaching concept of middle school English teachers,reforming teaching methods and improving teaching quality.