A Study On The Application Of The Situational Teaching Method To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

English vocabulary learning has long been recognized as a critical and essential part in English learning.Therefore,improving the efficiency of English vocabulary acquisition has established itself as a central task for English teaching.In the process of teaching English vocabulary in senior high schools,most teachers commonly adopt traditional teaching methods and few of them pay attention to the situational teaching method.This study intends to explore the efficiency of the situational teaching method used for English vocabulary teaching in senior high school,which raises two specific questions:Question 1: To what extent does the application of the situational teaching method to senior high school English vocabulary teaching enhance the students’ learning motivation?Question 2: To what extent does the application of the situational teaching method to senior high school English vocabulary teaching improve the students’ vocabulary ability?The experimental subjects are sixty students of two parallel classes in Grade Two from No.2 senior high school in the city of Huludao.A pre-questionnaire on task motivation and a pre-test of vocabulary ability are provided at the beginning of the experiment to see whether students of the two classes are at an equivalent level in English vocabulary learning motivation and English vocabulary ability.In the teaching process,the situational teaching method is applied in experimental class while traditional teaching methods are used in control class.At the end of the experiment,the same task-motivation questionnaire is used again to investigate students’ learning motivation,followed by a posttest to check whether there are changes in students’ vocabulary ability.As a supplement to this research,an interview is carried out to 8 students from experimental class.Then the data and results collected from the experiment are analyzed and discussed.Results can be concluded as follows: First,the benefit of using the situational teaching method to teach vocabulary in senior high school is felt through students’ motivation.Students become more concentrated in class and enthusiastic about English vocabulary learning.Secondly,students’ vocabulary ability is greatly improved through the application of the situational teaching method in English vocabulary teaching.