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In 1923, the famous anthropologist Malinowski put forward the notion of context. Many foreign scholars put forward the development of context theory, and gradually applied it to the vocabulary teaching. From the researches abroad, we could know that most foreign linguists explore the non-linguistic context with the development of context theory. And with the development of the theory of context, many scholars began to study both linguistic and non-linguistic context.
With the development of the foreign language learning, more and more Chinese scholars began to pay their attention to context in foreign language teaching. From the study, we can see that China has achieved great development in vocabulary teaching in context. However, there are still some problems in learning vocabulary. Works on the application of context to vocabulary teaching at home are still fewer compared with works in other linguistic fields. This current situation needs to be changed as soon as possible.
Ⅱ. Understanding of the Context
When we discuss the application of context to the effect of English vocabulary teaching, firstly, we should discuss the definition and classification of context and then study the relationship between context and word meaning.
2.1 Definition of Context
Both Chinese and foreign scholars have not yet given a fixed ideal about the definition of context. Context is used in many different fields, such as philosophy linguistics and psychology. In the linguistic field, different linguists from different places give different definitions, so the definition of context is still a controversial topic.
Context is stemmed from Latin word “contextus”, which means joining together. According to The New Oxford English Dictionary (2007), the term “context” usually has two main meanings. The first one refers to the words that come just before and after a word, a phrase or a statement and help you to understand its meaning. The second one means the situation in which something happens and helps you understand it. The former one means linguistic context and is usually considered to be used in some marrow sense. The latter one is about desirable account of context and is used in some broad sense, which contains background, condition, society or culture with which the vocabulary is related. This is known as non-linguistic context. We need to understand the two kinds of contexts to help us deal with the meaning of vocabulary.
According to Rod Eills, context means “the different setting in which second language learning can take place” (197), and the context theory includes two different parts. The first one is situational context, the situation in which an utterance is produced. The second one is linguistic context. This is the linguistic environment, the surrounding language of an utterance (123). Fetzer studies the context from different views. He thinks context is a dynamic definition rather than a static one. From this opinion, context can be seen as a dynamic construct which is established through the interaction (69). That is to say, context is regarded as both procedure and product. And it can build complex relations between participants, background, and events.