A Study On The Application Of Context-based Teaching Approach To English Vocabulary Teaching In Junior High School

It is well known that vocabulary,as one of the three elements of language(vocabulary,phonetics and grammar),is of vital importance.Hammer(1991),a foreign linguist,once pointed out that “if the skeleton of a language refers to the grammatical structure,then word is its organs as well as flesh and blood.Even if you master the grammatical structure,you can never express anything without the use of words.” The importance of vocabulary can be seen in terms of language expression.Therefore,vocabulary teaching takes an important role in English teaching.However,there are still some problems and deficiencies in junior high school English vocabulary teaching in China,such as the traditional and single vocabulary teaching method,which teachers teach words in isolated context,and students memorize words mechanically.As a result,it always gets half results with double efforts.Considering that junior high school is a critical stage of English learning,it is crucial for students to master effective vocabulary learning strategies and develop good learning habits for future English learning.Therefore,it is urgent for students and teachers to explore scientific and effective vocabulary teaching methods.Based on the Theory of Depths of Processing and The Cone of Experience,this paper explores how to apply the context-based approach to English teaching in junior high schools,so as to explore a scientific and effective way suitable for the development of junior school students,and to meet the requirements of the new curriculum standards on students’ English learning.Through four months of experimental teaching,the author intends to verify the following three hypotheses:1.Context-based teaching approach is more effective than traditional teaching approach in enhancing students’ vocabulary memory.2.Context-based teaching approach can effectively improve students’ comprehensive English scores.3.Context-based teaching approach has different impacts on the English performance of students at different levels.The author uses SPSS 24.0 to analyze the data,and the results show that thethree research hypotheses are valid,in which context-based teaching approach has positive influence on excellent students,but not on medium grade and bad grade students.Therefore,context-based teaching approach is worth exploring and implementing in junior high school.The author puts forward some suggestions for future teaching.Firstly,more knowledge about word formation and more activities should be designed in class.For context clues,teachers should reduce the use of new words or mark the meaning of low-frequency words when designing sentences.Secondly,it is necessary to dig deeply into the non-linguistic context material behind the textbook and design the cultural context activities.Thirdly,more competition and video activities are designed to improve the participation of students.Finally,teacher’s speech rate and various expressions and patterns should be gradually increased to enable students to adapt to the real context.However,due to the author’s own theoretical level and other objective factors,the research has some limitations inevitably.It is hoped that this study can provide some methods for improving vocabulary teaching in junior middle school and some help for future vocabulary research.