语境因素对词汇习得的影响

1、语境因素对词汇习得的影响以初中英语教学为例on the influence of language context on the vocabularyacquisitionwith reference to vocabulary teaching of junior high schoolstudents摘要英语的词汇教学是英语教学的基础，一直受到广大英语教师的重视。词汇教 学的重要手段就是利用语境教学。语境因素影响并制约了词义的推导及阐释，离 开特定的语境，词语的真正内涵就难以确定，言语就无法准确地传递信息。语境在 词汇教学中的作用举足轻重。本文主要探讨语境在词汇习得中的作用及应用，并尝试将

2、语境理论与我国初 中英语词汇教学的实际和结合，从而帮助学生正确理解词义，提高学牛的语言理 解能力和交际能力。在此基础上，作者进一步分析了语境和词汇意义的密切关系, 以及语境因索与词汇习得的重要关系。并且利用实证研究來检验理论的实践指导 作用。实验设为实验班和对照班，分别采用不同的词汇习得方式，最后通过测试 检验实验结果。最后作者根据spss的统计数据，捉岀完善词汇语境教学的相关 建议。关键词：语境；词义；词汇习得；初中英语abstractvocabulary is the basis of english teaching, so teachers pay great importance t

3、o it. a useful means of vocabulary teaching is to adopt the language context. context elements greatly affect and restrain the connotation and explanation of the word meaning without the specific context, the connotation of words can't be identified. therefore, the meaning of the words cant be d

4、elivered exactly. context is of vital importance to vocabulary teaching and learning.this thesis mainly explores the effect and application of context elements in the vocabulary acquisition, tries to combine the theories of context with the present vocabulary teaching in junior high schools and help

5、 students understand the words meaning to enhance their understanding and communicative abilities. what，s more, the author further analyzing the close relation between context and word meaning, and the relation between context and vocabulary acquisition. the empirical study is adopted to make sure w

6、hether these theories can guide practices. the experimental class and reference class, adopting different teaching methods, check their results through exam at last based on the analysis of spss, some teaching methods about how to improve vocabulary learning in the context is raised.key words: langu

7、age context; word meaning; vocabulary acquisition; junior high school englishcontentabstract in chineseabstract in englishintroductionchapter one introduction of context and word meaning1.1 classification of context1.2 word meaning1.3 the relationship between words and meaningchapter two the role of

8、 context in vocabulary acquisition2.1 limitations of definition-based vocabulary instruction2.2 advantages of vocabulary acquisition through contextchapter three methodology31 purpose of the study3.2 subjects3.3 design of experiments3.4 procedures of experimentchapter four results and discussiion4.1

9、 results of the questionnaire4.2 discussion of the questonnaire4.3 implications to the task-teaching approachconclusionreferenceappendix oneappendix twoappendix threeintroductionthe word vocabulary seems very easy and superficial, hardly arouses any attention. however, if we dig into certain depth,

10、it is rather complex and embodies many elements in it.vocabulary is a fundamental component in a language, even its essence. vermeer (1992) also asserts "knowing words is the key to understanding and being understood the bulk of learning a new language consists of learning new words. grammatica

11、l knowledge does not make for great proficiency in a language”. vocabulary is a necessay prerequisite, as coady (1997) points out, for reading extensively in target language, the better the efl students learn the target vocabulary, the more likely they will be effective and successful in learning th

12、e target language. therefore, vocabulary knowledge should be the top priority when it comes to learning a foreign language. there is an overwhelming agreement that the comprehension of a great number of vocabulary is the cornerstone of fully master a foreign language, which is indispensable to know

13、about the thoughts and culture of another world. having once been treated as a less important factor, vocabulary undergone a considerable transfer from being primary to being secondary in foreign language teaching and learning in china.the study of context in vocabulary acquisition is of great signi

14、ficance obviously from two aspects. firstly, words tend to change their meaning from one context to another. what a word means on any given occasion is identified by the context in which it is used. learning an isolated list of words without reference to the context is of no help to the comprehensiv

15、e understanding of word meanings. secondly, the various contexts where a word appears also provide considerable input from which language learners can pick up huge amount of vocabulary knowledge. no matter what kind of explicit vocabulary instruction they may receive, it can only cover a modest prop

16、ortion of the words they will learn. so the large vocabulary can only be acquired in context but not vocabulary instruction.traditional english teaching in junior high school in china focuses on developing the linguistic competence rather than the pragmatic competence on the part of students. though

17、 we often hear the mention of "context”，yet it usually refers to the linguistic context but not the situational context or cultural context at all. most teachers neglect the application of extra-linguistic context and pay little attention to the actual use of the words; therefore, students lack

18、 the ability to use the words they have learned appropriately. learning vocabulary in context can be an effective approach to enhance students1 word power and their ability to use english appropriately. this is why this paper devotes to the study of the role and application of context in vocabulary

19、acquisition.chapter one introduction of context and word meaninghalliday explained the important role of the context of situation in determining the meanings in language use, pointing out that ”utterances and situation are bound up inextricably with each other and the context of situation is indispe

20、nsable for the understanding of words/1 (malinowski, 1923:307). in his opinion, the context of culture was also indispensable for the adequate understanding of the text.1.1 classification of contextsince there is increasing attention being paid to the study of context, many linguists have been tryin

21、g to define and classify context from different perspectives, e.g. context has been divided into situational and textual context, transparent and obscure context, macro and micro context, inter-linguistic and extra-linguistic context, etc. it is evident that all the classifications of context are in

22、terrelated. in this paper, in order to combine context theory with vocabulary acquisition, context is classified into three categories: linguistic context, context of situation and context of culture.1.1.1 linguistic contextlinguistic context refers to interrelation between linguistic units within t

23、he language system, including not only collocation of words and conversation, but also interrelation between paragraphs sentences in the article or and texts. it falls into three categories: lexical context, grammatical context and verbal context.1.1.2 context of situationaccording to halliday and h

24、asan environment in which a text is actually (1985:12-58), context of situation is the immediate functioning the immediate environment refers to such factors as the event, the time, cause, place, topic and participant. language varies according to different situations. any given instance of language

25、 is inextricably bound up with its context of situation and different types of situation require us to handle the language differently context of situation comprises background knowledge, actual speech setting and type of discourses. situational context clues are important in determining the meaning

26、 of a word for example, if we want to fully understand a word in a text, we sometimes ought to know some of the background knowledge in a dialogue, we should know the participants, the relationship between them, their educational background and educational level, and the cognitive information shared

27、 by participants etc., so that we can deeply understand the meaning of a word. furthermore, different words should be employed in different types of discourses.1.1.3 context of culturecontext of culture refers to the cultural background against which a word, an utterance or a speech event is related

28、. each language user belongs to a specific community, which has its own history, culture, customs, and criteria. arensberg and niehoff (1964) suggest that nnothing more clearly distinguishes one culture from another than its language.n language is inseparable from culture. a word must be used in a s

29、pecific language system, and every language is part of its culture, so the meaning of word is finally determined by the culture of which it is a part. owing to cultural differences, the same lexical item may not mean the same thing to peopje of different cultures. and in any language, there is alway

30、s a considerable part of the vocabulary that either has cultural background behind 让 or evokes cultural association, such as "swallow-tailed coath to western countries and "旗袍” to china; nrosem and "红豆”，which represent love in western countries and china respectively. they are the dir

31、ect or indirect reflection of national culture on lexis.1.2 word meaingthe study of meaning is comparatively recent as indo-european linguists paid attention almost exclusively to the study of sounds and grammatical forms. it was towards the end of the 19th century that semantics began to attract th

32、e attention of linguists.word meaning is made up of various components which are commonly described as types of meaning. two main types of word meaning are grammatical and lexical.1.2.1 grammatical word meaninggrammatical meaning is the component of meaning identical in individual forms of different

33、 studied, words, for instance, the tense meaning in the word-forms of verbs (worked, taught, etc.), or the case meaning (boy's，girls), or the plural meaning (baby, babies, child, children, etc)1.2.2 lexical meaninglexical meaning is the meaning of an isolated word in a dictionary. this component

34、 of meaning is identical in all forms of the word. for example, the word-forms "go, goes, went, gone, going11 possess different grammatical meanings of tenses, persons and so on. in each of these forms we find the same lexical meaning expressing the process of movement.1.3 the relationship betw

35、een context and meaningcontext and meaning are closely related. every context can give some clues to a wordfs meaning. as we mentioned above, there is much polysemy in any language. the distinct meaning of a given word can only be determined in the specific context it occurs. take the word make for

36、example, oxford advanced learners dictionary lists its 25 meanings as a verb, with more than 20 idioms and phrases (1998:895). all these uses are not distinct meanings, however, but simply different sets of contexts in which make may occur. we need context to find out its distinct meaning.context ca

37、n play a vital role in eliminating ambiguities. "ambiguity refers to a word, phrase, sentence or group of sentences with more than one possible interpretation."(张韵斐 1987:241)chapter two the role of context in vocabulary acquisition2.1 limitations of definitiobased vocabulary instructionin

38、order to understand the role of context in vocabulary growth, we must first understand the limitations of vocabulary instruction, and especially of traditional definition-based instruction.one major limitation is the number of words that can be effectively covered. nagy and anderson (1984:304) concl

39、ude that neven the most ruthlessly systematic direct vocabulary instruction could neither account for a significant proportion of all the words children actually learn, nor cover more than 1 modest proportion of the words they will encounter in school reading materialsmost american schoolchildren re

40、ceive very little vocabulary instruction, at most covering a few hundred words a year (durkin, 1979:481-533; roser and juel, 1982:110-18). however, anglin(1993) estimates children's rate of growth for hpsychologically basic vocabulary” as being about 3,000 words per year between grades one and f

41、ive. the gap between the two figures manifests that the large reading vocabularies cannot be attributed to vocabulary instructioflthose who claim that definition-based instruction plays a major role in vocabulary growth must agree the idea that there are relatively few words to be learned and very f

42、ew meanings per word. therefore words must rely very heavily on reference specification, rather than sense selection, to account for contextual variation in meaning. such reliance on reference-specification leads to a discrepancy between the definition and the meaning that a word conveys in any give

43、n context. as we mentioned above, if a word is assigned a single sense, this sense must necessarily be abstract, sometimes may even be "beyond conscious comprehension" (raul, 1989:22). in some cases, "words and their evoked effect in a particular sentence may seem to totally part comp

44、any” (ruhl, 1989:81). definitions are ineffective instructionally because they are abstract and decontextualized whereas hrealn word knowledge is inherently situated.the other limitation is that definition-based learning typically involves memorizing brief definitions representing only a single mean

45、ing of the word to be learned, and hence leads to only a shallow level of word knowledge.in addition, definition-based instruction takes considerable time. in the mckeown et al. (1983:17) experiment, 104 words were taught over a five-month period in 75 thirty-minute lessons. about 80 per cent of the

46、 words were learned. in addition, no single encounter with a word, whether in instruction or in the course of reading or listening, can lead to any great depth of word knowledge. even the richest programs of vocabulary instruction require seven or more encounter with a word to produce "ownershi

47、p” of the word (mckeown, beck, omanson and pople, 1985:522-35). definition-based instruction might serve as a helpful initiating event in learning some words or may help students organize and articulate their developing knowledge of a word (schmitt and schmitt, 1995:133-43). but we cant deny that th

48、e bulk of vocabulary acquisition occurs as a word is encountered repeatedly in context.2.2 advantages of vocabulary acquisition through contextit is the generally accepted assumption that vocabulary can be divided into productive vocabulary and receptive vocabulary.though estimates of productive voc

49、abulary and receptive vocabulary have been numerous, and though authors generally insist on a dichotomy between production and reception in terms of the lexicon, there still lacks a clear and adequate definition of what is meant by production and reception. in other words, production and reception h

50、ave been widely estimated but rarely defined.the concept of word familiarity, which could be considered as a measurement concept, has often been used in discussing degrees of knowledge. in other words, language must not only be grammatical, but it must be appropriate. context, linguistic or extra-li

51、nguistic, is rather important in the recognition process because it helps the learner retrieve a wordthere is no denying that context helps receptive knowledge, furthermore, it has a similar and facilitating effect on productive vocabulary vocabulary acquisition should be seen as a cumulative activi

52、ty, rather than an all-or-nothing affai匚 some aspects may have become productive while others remain at the receptive level. in the process of recognizing a word, there is still an element of vagueness left in our brain. through successive encounters with a word and successive guessings in context a

53、fter context, we sooner or later learn more and more precisely the meaning or meanings of the once unfamiliar word. very often the transition of a word from a students receptive vocabulary to his productive one is a gradual process. repeated hearing or reading the items in contexts over a period of

54、time is often the most common way in which this transition takes place. by the time we have encountered a word often enough, the accumulated exclusions have subtracted enough from the vagueness, and the association of the word with its meanings have become increasingly precise by this way, even if t

55、he word has not a totally productive stage, many of its features may be productively known to us.on the other hand, the acquisition in turn benefits reading comprehension. learning words in context brings additional speed and accuracy benefits over and above learning words in isolation and such bene

56、fits can result in corresponding gains in comprehension. what can account for the additional boost in reading speed (and accuracy) following vocabulary acquisition in context? one possible explanation is that building up sight recognition of words in context might engage more semantic processes than

57、 reading words in isolation. accordingly, words learned in context might have deeper or more meaningful representations in memory. and words with more sophisticated representations would be accessed with greater speed and precision when they are encountered during subsequent reading tasks. the other

58、 explanation is that the techniques which we employ to learn new words in context are almost the techniques needed for improving reading comprehension: careful, slow reading; careful analysis of the text; a directed search for information useful to inferring a meaning; application of relevant previo

59、us knowledge2.3 the present situation in junior high school englsih teaching in chinathe traditional english-teaching model in china is teacher-centered examination-oriented, grammar and vocabulary-based. the focus of attention in english teaching is put on developing the linguistic competence rather than the pragmatic competence on the part of students in china. the socio-linguistic, pragmatic and cultural knowledge of language has been ignored for a long time. in chinafs english teaching and learning, thou