论文总字数：24323字

摘 要

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………….........1

1.1 Need for the study……………………………………………………………...1

1.2 Research purpose……………………………………………………………….1

2. Literature review………………………………………………………………….3

3. Methodology……………………………………………………………..………...5

3.1 Research questions………………………………………………………….….5

3.2 Research design.........................…………………………………………....…..6

3.3 Data collection……………………………………………………………….....7

3.4 Data analysis…………………………………....……………………………....8

4. Results and discussion………………………………………………………….....9

4.1Results…………………………………………………………………….…….9

4.2Discussion………………………………………………………………….......10

5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..11

5.1 Major findings of the study………………………………………….…….…..11

5.2 Implications…………………………………………………………………....11

5.3 Limitations and suggestions for future research…………………………….....11

Reference …………………………………………………………………………13

Acknowledgment

Writing this paper is a real challenge in my four years’ life. I am very grateful to these people who have given me a lot of help in my writing, without their support, I will not accomplish this paper. Here I would like to take the opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks to those who have contributed, directly and indirectly, to the completion of this paper.

First, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my my supervisor, Mr. Bao Gui. He has given me many useful guidance in every stages in my paper writing. During my working on the paper, he helped me choose the topic, collecting the samples, and accessing the software for treating the data. Without his generous help and support, this work will not be finished. I am very pleasure that I can benefit a lot from him. His keen and vigorous academic observation enlightens me not only in this thesis but also in my future study.

Besides,I am very grateful to other teachers who educated me and gave me a lot of help in the past four years in NJUT.

I would also like to thank to my dear friends and fellow students, who have accompanied me throughout the four years at the university.

Last but not least, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to my parents for their love and support all these years.

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of context on vocabulary learning, and the context can be divided into the passage context and sentence context.

The objective of the study is to examine the effect of context on EFL learners’vocabulary learning, the question is as follows:

Is there any difference in EFL learners’ vocabulary learning between the passage context and sentence context?

We provided the students with 20 new words in the passage context and the sentence context and indicated the meanings in the brackets in the contexts. The students were devided into two groups. One group needed to translate the sentences with the new words in the passage and the other needed to translate the same 20 sentences out of the passage within 40 minutes. After 10 minutes, a new word test of the 20 words above needed to be completed within 10 minutes. Then we collected the data. In this study, the t-test was used to test the contextual difference in vocabulary learning, and SPSS was used to analyze the data.

The following conclusion can be drawn from the data analysis. The passage context has a better impact on the learners’ vocabulary learning than the sentence context. This shows the effect of a richer context on EFL learners’ vocabulary learning is stronger than that of a less rich context.

Based on the above conclusion, this study has the following implications for English teaching. Teachers should use richer contexts to help promote students vocabulary learning. And when the learners’ contextual utilization ability has reached a more mature level, they should read in some richer contexts, because it is more helpful to English learners' vocabulary learning.

Key words: vocabulary learning passage context sentence context

中文摘要

本文研究的是语境对词汇学习的影响，语境可分为短文语境和单句语境。

本文旨在分析与比较不同语境下外语学习者的词汇学习能力,主要回答以下问题:

丰富语境和单一语境下学习者的词汇学习能力是否存在差异？

我们为学生提供包含20个生词的短文和句子并且在括号里注明意思。学生被划分为两队，一队在40分钟内翻译短文中包含生词的句子， 另一队在40分钟内翻译相同的没有短文语境的20个句子。休息10分钟后，他们需要做一个包含上述20个生词的词汇测试。接着我们收集数据。本研究中t检验来检验相关性，并使用spss统计相关数据作出分析。

从数据分析可以得出以下结论。短文语境对学习者词汇学习能力的影响高于句子语境。这表明了丰富语境对学习者词汇学习能力的影响强于单一语境。

根据以上结论，此研究对英语教学有如下启示。教师应当使用更为丰富的语境来帮助学生提升词汇学习。并且，当二语学习者的语境利用能力已达到较成熟的水平时，应当开展一些更丰富的语境的阅读，因为这也更有助于英语学习者词汇学习能力提高

关键词：词汇学习能力 语境 影响

1.Introduction

The intention of this study is to explore the effect of context on EFL learners’ vocabulary learning. Context is closely related to an EFL learner’s reading. So far much research has been done on the context (Urpo Kovala 2012; Robert S. Hatten 2014). But little has been done on the relationship between context and vocabulary learning. This study is aimed to make a comparison of EFL learners’ vocabulary learning in different contexts in order to study the effect of context on EFL learners’ vocabulary learning.

• 1. Need for the study

The motives for such research include the motives for much scientific inquiry. But in addition this knowledge of the relationship between context and vocabulary learning would have practical consequences. It might not only provide a proper method to improve vocabulary learning, but also supply a gap of context perception. Moreover, it might enlighten curriculum designers to refine the teaching of the comprehension of context in order to help EFL learners to achieve better vocabulary learning .

Many studies about the effect of context on EFL learners’ vocabulary learning have been conducted on (Malinowskiers, 1930; O’Donnell, 1965; J.R.Fitth, 1989; Levinson, 1983;). As to the definition of context, Malinowskiers (1975) and J.R.Fitth (1989) have divided context into two parts, one is context of culture, one is context of situation. From the results, Malinowskiers has put forward that different cultural and situation contexts will affect readers’ comprehension to reading materials. Levinson (1983) has also pointed out that concrete meaning can only be acquired in concrete context, and semantic cognition must rely on the context. However, so far the effect of context on EFL learners’ vocabulary learning has been rarely studied, let alone the empirical research on it. Therefore, this study is conducted to make a comparison of EFL learners’ vocabulary learning from the perspective of context in order to see the effect of context on EFL learners’ vocabulary learning in EFL learners’ syntactic development.

1.2 Research purpose

The research is directed on a comparison of vocabulary learning in different contexts. Therefore a comparison of EFL learners’ vocabulary learning between passage context and

sentence context can be made. Hence some facts about how context and vocabulary learning in EFL learning are related can be detected.

2.Literature review

2.1 Concept of context

2.1.1 Definition of context

Malinowskiers (1930) first put forward the conception of context and made a conclusion that meaning would not exist without context. He divided context into two parts：context of cultural and context of situation. Cultural context means social cultural background, and situation context means specific background of behavior. Hymes (1946) held the view that context includes background, purpose, extent of formality, participators, content and so on. Lyons (1997) pointed out the conception the relativity of context in his book principles of pragmatics. It means that concrete meaning can only be acquired in concrete context, which explains why the same sentence has different meanings in different contexts.

2.1.2 Type of context

The concept of context was first proposed by Polish anthropologist B. Marinowski in 1923. He distinguishes two types of contexts, one is the "context", and one is the "cultural context", which can also be divided into "linguistic context" and "non-linguistic context". The linguistic context refers to the context in which a certain discourse structure expresses a particular meaning in the process of communication, which includes both the context of the written language and the preface of spoken language; sexual context refers to various subjective and objective factors that depend on a particular meaning in the process of expressing a certain discourse, including time, place, occasion, topic, communicator's identity, status, psychological background, cultural background, the purpose of communication, the way of communication, the objects involved in communication, and the nonverbal symbols , such as gestures and gestures that appear simultaneously with the discourse structure.

Scenario context is knowledge related to reading materials. This knowledge exists outside the textbook, but it is essential to truly understand the text and the language.

The British linguist Lyons interprets the situation context as abstract factors abstracted from the actual situation and that have an impact on speech activity, including

the parties, the occasion (time, place), the formal level of speech, Communication media, topic or register.

Speech acts always occur in certain situations, and the actual situation of speech acts (such as the person, event, time, place, etc.) can also help determine the meaning of the language form.

Cultural context refers to the social and cultural background related to verbal communication. It can be divided into two aspects, one is the cultural customs, which refers to the life mode in the social of people passed on from generation to generation, is a social mass in the language, behavior and psychological collective habits. It is normative and binding to people. Another is social forms, which refers to various provisions and restrictions to verbal communication activities made by a society.

2.2 Effect of context on EFL learners’ vocabulary learning

Generally speaking, the effect of context on vocabulary learning can be divided into three parts. First, the context helps confirm the sense of a word. As Malinowskiers (1930) said, without context, a word has no meaning. In EFL learning, polysemy is normal. Each word has a new meaning in a new context, so context helps us confirm the meaning of a word. Second, the context of situation help promote discourse comprehension, including the meaning of a single sentence or guess to an unfamiliar word. Britain Lingiscian Lyons (1997) explained context of situation as a fact which comes from actual situation and something which has effect on language activities, including degree of formality of time, conservation, place, character, and communication medium and register. The environment provide the knowledge of background, it indicates writers’ theme from a certain extent. Third, the context of cultural can help promote EFL learners’ vocabulary learning. It contains cultural, history, values, local conditions and customs and common knowledge which form in the long-term history, which was put forward by Malinowskiers (1930). Cultural context is divided into formal cultural context and general cultural context. The formal cultural context mainly includes literature, history, religion, philosophy, politics, economy and so on. The general cultural context mainly includes social customs, living habits, way of thinking, customs and so on. Cultural context is generally not directly

appear in the chapter, its understanding of vocabulary learning is hidden, not easy to detect. With the help of cultural context, EFL learners may understand the meaning of the same sentence or word more accurately.

Among the first kind of effect, a study used mean to confirm the frequency of using context was conducted by Fengjiao Chan (1900). In this study, an analysis was made with Pearson’s correlation coefficient on the relationship between the frequency of using context and the ability of vocabulary cognition. The frequency of using context, the kind of context and students’ vocabulary cognition are not simple linear relations. But generally context has some effect on vocabulary cognition.

2.3 Related studies of the context in EFL reading

In the aspect of situation context, some linguists also have done many theoretical research on it. Jin Yang(2014) is one of them. In her study, she give an example: “keep one eye on the bowl and the other on the pan.” It mean eating food in the bowl and at the same time keep your eyes on the food in the pan. It describes profession as bowl instead of bread. In this situation context with Chinese culture, it is difficult for foreign language learners to understand. It is the same as iron bowl(civil servant and state-owned enterprise employees), gold bowl(a high income and enviable career) and wood bowl(A guaranteed job). Similarly, if provided situation context in English reading, it may be easier to understand the meaning of sentences and words.

In the study of effect of cultural context, Liuyuan (2011) analyzes it from the role of formal cultural context in vocabulary learning. Many English articles are related to cultural background knowledge, such as historical events, literary allusions, religious beliefs, political terms, and the author's writing intentions, standpoints and so on. He take the sentence “Grandfather，ill as he was，always liked to have met here. He would often ask about my progress at school. The day I told him of my success in the examinations，he was pleased as Punch.” As an example, to understand the meaning of the italic part of the example sentence, it is necessary to understand the literary background knowledge it is concerned with: Punch is the protagonist of the British puppet show Punch and Judy, humped, with long nose and always quarrels with his wife Judy triumphantly. Only with

this cultural context, can EFL learners get the meaning of it.

LinZu（2008）pointed out that knowledge of background had an effect on reading speed. He analyzed the data with mean value and found that students’ reading speed will be better with the knowledge of background. So he gave some advice on the teaching of vocabulary learning: help students learn ore knowledge about cultural knowledge, readion knowledge, technology and so on.

2.4 Problems in the previous studies

In conclusion, context has important effect on vocabulary learning in several aspects. But there are still some problems in previous studies. First , the empirical study does not get accurate results. Second, there are few empirical studies on this subject, most of which are theoretical analysis. So far this study will focus on the empirical study in this aspect.

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