The Application of Situational Language Teaching to English Vocabulary Teaching in Junior Middle Schools
 
Name：Zeng Xianxian Introductor: Li Jing
 
1. Introduction
 
Since China entered WTO on November tenth 2001, the significance of learning English well has being recognized gradually. Therefore English teaching is becoming more and more important. As we all know, what vocabulary to English learning is what brick to houses. So vocabulary learning is the most important part of English learning. In order to better promote the development of English vocabulary education, various teaching methods have been employed, such as Situational Language Teaching, Task-based Language Teaching, Communicative Language Teaching, and Grammar Translation Method and so on. As an old saying goes, every coin has two sides. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages. Among them, the most suitable way for junior middle schools students’ learning is Situational Language Teaching. Although there are still many problems, they can be improved in the future.
 
This paper is including five parts: 1. Introduction; 2. Situational Language Teaching; 3. English vocabulary teaching in junior middle schools; 4. The application of Situational Language Teaching to English Vocabulary teaching in junior middle schools; 5. Conclusion. In the second part, the paper talks about Definitions of Situational Language Teaching and Advantages of Situational Language Teaching. In the third part, the paper simply introduces Definition of word and vocabulary, Vocabulary learning and teaching in junior middle schools and Present situation of vocabulary learning and teaching in junior middle schools. The fourth part is the main body of this paper. In this part, it presents Principles of designing situations, Principles of teaching vocabulary, Process of designing situation in vocabulary teaching in junior middle schools, Vocabulary case of Situational Language Teaching and Some suggestions on implementing Situational Language Teaching in English vocabulary teaching in junior middle schools.#p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#
 
2. Situational Language Teaching
 
2.1 Definitions of Situational Language Teaching
 
Situational Language Teaching is also called Aral Approach and Situational Language Teaching or Audio Video Method, which was initiated by a group of British language teaching specialists, such as Harold Palmer and A.S Hornby, in the 1920s and 1930s. Situational Language Teaching is the development of Audio-lingual Method. Therefore, they have a number of similarities, such as the same theoretical basis. But as two different teaching methods, Situational Language Teaching differs from Audio-lingual Method. The former emphasizes the application of language in situation, while the latter does not.
 
So what does situation mean? At the mention of situation, we will naturally think of John Dewey. As a famous American psychologist, philosopher, educator, social critic and political activist, he believes that thought comes from the direct experience of situation. For an effective class based teaching, having a good situation is indispensable. It can help to activate students' thinking, stimulate their interests and improve their motivation and initiative in learning English. Therefore, many scholars make every endeavor to define it in the hope of helping people get a better and clearer understanding about this concept. The following are the definitions of “situation” made by different experts. In Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionaries, situations often refer to all the circumstances and things that are happening at a particular time and in a particular place (Hornby, 2004: 1637). Situation is the concrete presentation in both formation atmosphere and psychological activity state of feeling and thought (汪萍，2001: 129). There are two layers of meaning about situation. On the one hand, situation refers to scenery, scenes and environment. On the other hand, it means characters, plots as well as the feeling and inner world aroused by scenery and scenes (徐聞, 2007: 486). In a word, situation is a specific image which can help students to understand difficult language easily.
 
Situational Language Teaching is a teaching method applied by educators to create series of specific and vivid situations which is closely connected with their teaching aims, that is to say, educators make use of these specific images or language description to make educatees have some presentation in mind, so as to activate educatees’ nonintellectual factors, to stimulate their zeal for study, to help them better understand and apply language on the whole (李愛華, 2011: 128). It also refers to teachers presenting the things described in the text in the classroom. Through the guidance of teachers, make them situated in the atmosphere that textbook tends to present, and stimulate students’ imagination, thinking and sensibility. Besides, teachers can ask clever rhetorical questions, so as to achieve the expected education effect (張文嫻, 2010: 65). By the influence of structuralism, Wen Jialing thinks that Situational Language Teaching is an approach treating language as a structure and a system of rules. The teaching materials’ should be arranged according to the grammatical structure, sentence patterns from easy to difficult (文嘉玲, 2008: 258). According to the above definitions and other documents’ definitions on Situational Language Teaching, the author thinks that Situational Language Teaching is a method that under the guidance of teaching aims, teaching plan teaching materials and analysis of students, teachers create a certain emotional and concrete situation in which students feel that they are in real scene and make real conversation.#p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#
 
2.2 Advantages of Situational Language Teaching
 
Situational Language Teaching absorbs the advantages of traditional English teaching, and shows its unique advantages.
 
To begin with, Situational Language Teaching provides students with opportunities to train their comprehensive abilities. Humans can only understand things that constructed by themselves. So learner should be the builders and actors of meaning and knowledge. On the basis of students’ original cognitive level and linguistic knowledge, creating a language learning atmosphere and a language communicative situation can help students to have a positive emotional experience. That is to say that people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. Creating authentic English learning environment, making use of material objects, specimens and models, using pictures, drawing and making fully use of multimedia, they are commonly used in Situational language teaching. Through seeing, hearing, touching and other organs, students can draw the outline of a vivid and meaningful picture in mind, which helps to enrich their imagination and improve their comprehensive abilities.
 
Then, Situational Language Teaching offers a large quantity of opportunities for students to practice their oral English. Many scholars argue that sentences were not learned by imitation and repetition but generated from the learner’s underlying competence. For example, Ms. Han Aizhen deems it much better the aim of learning English is to communicate (韓愛珍, 2010: 108). Applying Situational Language Teaching in junior middle schools, teachers will create a variety of situations to attract and encourage students to open their mouths and communicate in English. There is no doubt that immersed in such familiar and interesting situations, students will be very happy and can not wait to share feelings with their classmates, by which the problem that how to foster students’ interests is solved. Through long-term oral practice, student’s English speaking ability will be improved at a tremendous rate.
 
Last but not least, Situational Language Teaching provides vivid, concrete, natural learning circumstances, which can arouse students’ motivation. Any language can not be divorced from a certain environment or situation. Only by creating interesting situations, problem situations, listening and speaking situations, teachers can make students master genuine English. Our principle classroom activity in the teaching of English structure will be the oral practice of structures. This oral practice of controlled sentence patterns should be given in situations designed to give the greatest amount of practice in English speech to the pupil (Pittman, 1963: 179). When learning English, they can communicate with it in real environment rather than remember some knowledge or rules. In this way, students’ interests are inspired. They can keep in high and long enthusiasm for English.#p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#
 
In a word, Situational Language Teaching does have its advantages in teaching English in Chinese context and especially when we stress the learning of vocabularies and certain sentence patterns.
 
3. English vocabulary teaching in junior middle schools
 
A language involves three elements: pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. Pronunciation is the vocal carrier of a language. Vocabulary is the vocal form of it. In the term of grammar, it is something structural to make vocabulary meaningful. It is obvious that vocabulary is the most essential part of the three elements. Vocabulary to language is brick to a building or molecules to a substance. Though it is small, it is not unimportant.
 
And the majority of American linguists believe that the most important factor affecting the understanding and application of language is vocabulary. The importance of words, as linguists pointed out that no matter how excellent a person’s grammar, no matter how beautiful his voice, if he does not have enough words to express their feelings or understanding he can not communicate with others. Besides, they have also pointed out that the characteristics (large quantities, no regularity and difficult to control) give the learner a great deal of difficulty. From this sense, the vocabulary teaching undoubtedly becomes important part of junior middle schools English instruction.
 
3.1 Definitions of word and vocabulary
 
Before the discussion of Vocabulary learning and teaching in junior middle schools, we should have a clear knowledge of the definition of words and vocabulary. So at the very beginning, let us talk something about words. What is a word? To some people, this question may be ridiculous. But this question has occupied the attention of scholars and experts for ages. The definition of the word has always been controversial. In structural linguistics, “word” is the smallest free form carrying voice and meanings. Zhang Weiyou definites the word in more detail ways: (1) it is a minimal free form of a language; (2) it is a sound unity; (3)it is a unit of meaning; (4) it is a form that can function alone in a sentence. Therefore, we can definite the word in this way: a word is a minimal free form of a language that has a given sound, meaning and syntactic functions (張維友, 2009: 1).
 
How about vocabulary? All the words in a language make up what is generally known as its vocabulary. Hatch believes that the term vocabulary refers to a list or set of words for a particular language or a list or a set of words that individual speakers of a language might use (Hatch, 2001: 1). In Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionaries, vocabulary has four meanings: (1) it means all the words in a particular language; (2) it means all the words that a person knows or uses; (3) it means the words that people use when they are talking about a particular subject; (4) it means a list of words with their meanings, especially in a book for learning a foreign language. But in this paper, we refer to the first definition of the Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionaries.#p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#
 
3.2 Vocabulary learning and teaching in junior middle schools
 
Most language learners begin learning another language by starting with vocabulary. Therefore, how to grasp vocabulary effectively and efficiently has become a very important task for both teachers and students. Generally speaking, a word includes pronunciation and spelling. But vocabulary teaching is not just a consideration of pronunciation and spelling, though they are also equally important.
 
According to Liu Yumei and Xiao Shu, vocabulary instruction includes the following parts: word meaning, word grammar, word formation, word use, word collocation, word relation and so on (劉玉梅&肖肅, 2007: 50).
 
However, Hedge, argues that vocabulary learning involves at least two aspects of meaning. The first aspect involves the understanding of its denotative and connotative meaning. The second aspect involves understanding the sense relations among words. In lexical items, it includes word collocations, antonyms, and hyponyms (Hedge, 2000: 112-116).
 
As for Wang Qiang (Wang Qiang, 2006: 118), he thinks that learning a word involves knowing its pronunciation and stress, knowing its spelling and grammatical properties, knowing its meaning and knowing how and when to use it to express the intended meaning.
 
3.3 Present situation of vocabulary learning and teaching in junior middle schools
 
Techniques in Teaching Vocabulary written by Allen: “For many years, however, programs that prepared for language teachers gave little attention to techniques for helping students learn vocabulary…In fact teachers were sometimes told that they ought not to teach many words before their students had mastered the grammar and the sound system of the language. In journal articles for teachers, vocabulary was seldom mentioned. Pronunciation and grammar were emphasized, but there was little or no emphasis on vocabulary. In short, vocabulary has been neglected in programs for teachers during much of the twentieth century” (Allen, 2002: 1).
 
She also pointed out one of the reasons why so little was said in methodology courses about teaching words and their meanings. “Some specialists in methodology seemed to believe that the meanings of words could not be adequately taught, so it was better not to try to teach them” (Allen, 2002: 2). Such views hindered the development of the vocabulary education to a great extent and made a bad influence to students. It is obvious that learning a second language means learning its vocabulary. It is would be unwise to learning English ignoring the vocabulary learning.
 
Without teachers’ help, many students devote large amounts of time and energy to the learning of vocabulary, but often end up with discontented learning results. Generally speaking, there are three problems. Firstly, few vocabulary strategies are employed, so that students learn vocabulary incorrectly by just learning its Chinese translation in isolation of context. When they come to reading or listening tasks with those words used in different contexts or in combination with other words, they get confused easily with the meaning they remembered. And, as a result, students have little passion to increase vocabulary, at last. Secondly, awareness of vocabulary learning is weak, as a result, students learn vocabulary in ineffective ways as they rote-learn all the vocabulary only before exams. After the exam, they quickly forget what they have learned. Last but not least, lack of teachers’ help. Although much of the work of vocabulary learning is the job of the students, teachers’ help is invaluable. If teachers’ presentation of vocabulary items effectively, it saves a lot of time and energy for consolidation.#p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#
 
Recent years, teachers and students have realized these problems gradually. After recognizing the importance of vocabulary, both students and teachers pay great attention to English vocabulary learning and teaching. But another problem aroused. Unlike the controversial role of grammar in foreign language learning, the role of vocabulary seems to have received more consistent understanding. However, uncertainty still remains regarding what constitutes a vocabulary item, which vocabulary items should be taught, and how vocabulary can be taught effectively.
 
With a large quantity scholar and expert’s long term’s efforts, various vocabulary strategies are employed at last.
 
4. The application of Situational Language Teaching to English Vocabulary teaching in junior middle schools
 
Students in junior middle schools are quite active and curious. When learning English, they want to communicate with it in real environment rather than remember some knowledge or rules. So it is essential for teachers to create various teaching situations to make students immerse in it. In this way, students’ interests are inspired. They can keep in high and long enthusiasm for English. Using Situational Language Teaching in junior middle schools is especially suitable.
 
4.1 Principles of designing situations
 
Nowadays, linguists have made the following principles of designing situations when using Situational Language Teaching in junior middle schools.
 
First, situations should fit the actual teaching content. As we all know, a good essay should have correct grammar, excellent organization, but the most important point is the content must be close to the topic. It is the same to designing situations. When teachers review old knowledge and teach new knowledge through Situational Language Teaching, the situations created by teachers must be close to teaching materials. It is the essential one of all the principles.
 
Second, situation should fit students’ actual knowledge level. According to this principle, when creating a situation, teachers must consider students’ life experience and knowledge. For difficulty, it should be moderate. If it is too difficult for students, students will loss their enthusiasm for English. For content, it should be close to students’ life. Only in this way, students can grasp the information of the situation correctly and easily.
 
Last but not least, situations should be vivid and attractive. The purpose of creating a situation in the process of teaching is primarily for attracting students into English learning. Therefore, if situations can attract students’ attention to English class and stimulate their desire to share their inner feelings, the target of designing situation is achieved to some extent. And for this principle, teachers should be familiar with students’ interests, and design different situations. And if the content of situations is rich and varied, reflecting the distinct characteristics of the times, and a strong flavor of life, students can master the new knowledge quite quickly and effortlessly. Hence for a successful situation, to be vivid and attractive is extremely important.#p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#
 
There are many other principles, but these three points are the most basic principles of designing situations. In a word, a successful situation designing must keep up with students’ study condition.
 
4.2 Principles of teaching vocabulary
 
Most teachers are aware that handling new words when they appear in class activities is an excellent and popular way to teach vocabulary. Besides, it is also beneficial to students’ vocabulary learning by means of doing direct and deep study of new vocabulary. Therefore, teachers make every effort to set up a regular vocabulary teaching and learning plan with their classes. Although people’s view of the principles of teaching vocabulary varies, the author thinks the following four principles can not be emphasized too much.
 
First, in teaching vocabulary, teachers should provide meaningful learning opportunities. As we all know that knowledge of a language is based on knowledge of actual usage. The effective and efficient presentation of word forms in language use is the primary factor to memory of word forms. An experienced teacher will provide a lot of meaningful learning opportunities intentionally or unintentionally in the class. Telling students the meanings of words or letting students read after teacher several times is not far enough. They need chances to hear or see new words in a meaningful context. What is more, they also need chances to use new words in meaningful writing and speaking tasks. Only in this way, students can have opportunities to master these new words.
 
Second, in teaching vocabulary, teaching ways should be in line with human’s memory rule. To begin with, generally speaking, in a given time people can store five items at least and nine items at the most. According to the limitation of short-term memory, it is not effective if the number of new words surpass nine. Thus, teaching new words in a given time, teachers should make full consideration of how many words to be taught is suitable. Then, according to the memory rule, students will also forget words they have learnt constantly. Teachers should deal with this problem appropriately, because it not only frustrates teachers but also discourages students’ enthusiasm. For this reason, at the very beginning, teachers should be patient with students and encourage them. On this occasion, helping students to review new words timely is of primary importance. That is to say, as soon as the information stored in short-term memory, it can become entrenched information in long-term memory after sufficient exposure and consideration.
 
Third, in teaching vocabulary, teachers should focus on different aspects of a word. LiuYumei and Xiao Su think that knowledge of a language is dynamic (劉玉梅&肖肅2007: 52). On the one hand, mechanical memorization is not an advisable way to learn vocabulary. Like Chinese words, English words also have much regularity that governs word forms, such as suffix and prefix. If we can find out these regularities, mastering these new words will become an easy job. On the other hand, just knowing a word’s meaning is not far enough for vocabulary learning. As for one word, students can learn its stress, collocations, family members and grammatical patterns. By this way, they can enrich their knowledge of a word, and help to remember it better.#p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#
 
Last but not least, teaching vocabulary teachers should not bring in other unknown or little-known related words. Especially for primary students, it is a taboo. So, when teaching new words, teachers had better using the words students have learnt before. It can not only help students to consolidate knowledge they have learnt before, but also explain the new word’s meaning correctly.
 
To sum up, there is no such thing as absolute certainty, but generally speaking with the help of these principles, vocabulary teaching and learning can achieve maximum results with little effort.
 
4.3 Process of designing situation in vocabulary teaching in junior middle schools
 
Different teachers have different point of views of their lesson. And different period, one teacher’s notions are different either. Therefore, every lesson is unique. Hoping to create interesting, efficient and feasible lessons for their students, making a good lesson before the class is most important. Especially for an English classroom with Situational Language Teaching, preparing lessons and writing teaching-plan are the first steps. Next, during the class, in order to create a good English learning environment, teachers should give a class all in English. With time goes by, students will fall into the habit of thinking and communicating in English.
 
As for the process of situation design in vocabulary teaching in junior schools, in general, we put Situational Language Teaching into two stages: presenting of new words, consolidating of new words.
 
4.3.1 Presenting new words
 
There are a great number of ways for teachers to present new words. However, different certain types of words are appropriate for different kinds of presentations and different teachers also prefer to present new words in different ways. If teachers master several kinds of presentation ways, they can choose optimum method according to the words’ type and the students’ condition. This is the most important part of all the process. Here are some methods that can be chosen.
 
Use real objects. This way is commonly used in vocabulary teaching in junior school. Teacher can make full use of the students and objects in the class. To begin with, it can easily draw students’ attention. Then, it can deepen student’s impression. When teachers are talking about something around the students, they will be very excited and happy to listen.
 
For example, in teaching Unit 4 where’s my backpack, which comes from Go for it Grade 7, teachers can put his or her text book on the desk, and ask students this question: where’s the book. Students reply with teachers’ help that the book is on the desk. Then teachers put the book on the floor. Students can not wait to answer that the book is on the floor. In this way, students can acquire the preposition on without any effort.#p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#
 
Use pictures, sketch drawings etc. It can make up the limitations that some objects are difficult to carry. And the sketch drawings are especially convenient. Some times, because of the limitation of teaching condition, teachers can’t find objects or pictures. On this occasion, if teachers have one chalk and one blackboard, they can present new words by drawing some simple lines on the blackboard. For instant, when teaching times, teachers can draw a big clock on the blackboard, because it is easy to change times.
 
Use actions. That is to say, teachers present new words by means of their actions. In class, teachers’ every movement is watched by students carefully. Therefore, an appropriate gesture, action, tone or expression made by teachers can attract students’ interest and attention easily. Teaching expressions, teachers can adopt this way. Teachers can make an expression by themselves or ask one student to do it, and then let students guess.
 
Use multimedia tools. Multimedia teaching is inevitable developing trend of English teaching. Multimedia combines word, voice, picture, and video, which can present abstract language knowledge to students vividly, iconic ally and intuitively. Learning English in a more relaxing atmosphere is benefit for students’ learning. That is why, more and more multimedia techniques are applied to the English class recent years.
 
Use scenes of life. According to teaching needs, teachers can change the class into a supermarket, hospital, office, home or some thing else. If need, teachers can also take students leave their classroom. In a real or semi-real situation, students can slip into the learning state as quickly as possible.
 
4.3.2 Consolidating new words
 
After the first stage, students have a primary understand of the new words. In this stage, our target is deepening students’ impression of these new words. In other words, in this stage, teachers will help students to shift the language knowledge from short-term memory to long-term memory.
 
What the most commonly used method is playing games. There is no doubt that almost every student likes playing games. For games, they are not only full of enthusiasm, but also becoming witty. In such atmosphere, students’ zeal is stimulated to the great extent. For example, when learning words sit and stand, teachers can let all students to act out what teachers say. If teachers say: stand, the whole class should stand up as quick as quickly. If teachers say: sit, the whole class should keep sit. Games like this are very simple and can be carried out easily. By playing the game, teachers can know students mastery of these two words. What is more, playing this game can consolidate new words.
 
Besides, creating a story by using new words is a good way, too. To remember some irrelevant words is difficult, but to remember a story is very easy. Students can remember new words by remembering a simple story. Firstly, teachers can pick out several new words randomly. Secondly, let students using these irrelevant words to make a story. Last but not least, evaluate which student’s story is the best. Language is used for communication. Only we learn to use them, they are really and truly mastered by us.#p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#
 
4.4 Vocabulary case of Situational Language Teaching
 
After discussing the process of Situational Language Teaching model, the paper will give a vocabulary case of Situational Language Teaching in junior middle schools.
 
Go for it! is published by People’s Education Press in 2007, which is now used by a large number of Junior school students. When teaching the new words of Go for it! Grade 7A Unit 7 How much are these pants, teachers can present new words and consolidate new words in the following two steps.
 
Step1: Presenting of new words
 
Teachers will divide this step into two parts, warming up and new words learning. The first part is warming up, and it will take 5 minutes, including two activities. Activity 1 is to enjoy a beautiful MV. The MV is related to what we are going to learn today, in order to let students to have a first impression of these new words. By using a MV, students can quickly focus their attention on the topic and the classroom climate will be relaxing and comfortable. What’s more, it can arouse the students’ interests in the topic and make students active. Activity 2 is playing a game, race to be the first to answer my questions. After the MV, teachers will ask some questions according to the MV, such as, how many kinds of clothing do you see in the MV, and what are they. Students will be very eager to share what they have remembered just now. In this way, teachers can easily know students’ preview condition. And it also is a good chance for students to speak English.
 
Then is the second part, new words learning. It will take 8 minutes. In this part, teachers will make a good use of the clothing that students are wearing, by asking students two questions. They are “what is this? /what are these?” Then teachers will guide them to guess the names of the clothing which haven’t been learnt before. At last, get them to master the new words by reading in various ways. For example, teachers will point to their sweater and ask students what’s this. Some students have previewed carefully, but some are not. So teachers will help them to answer: it’s a sweater. Let them read after teachers several times in the blackboard. Then, teachers point to some other student who is wearing sweater, and ask what this is. This time, almost the whole class has acquired this new word. So they can not wait to speak out it’s a sweater loudly. Like this, students’ learning enthusiasm is stimulated to a great extant. With this part, students will manage to master the new words and phrases on their own.
 
Step 2: Consolidating of new words
 
In order to impress new words more deeply, teachers will take further action to consolidate these new words that students have learned just now. No child can withstand the temptation of the game. If teachers set a game to consolidate new words and let students to remember new words while playing, students must be very happy to do it. Teachers can ask several students to come to the platform, and let them touch what teachers say as quickly as possible. The slowest student will be eliminated in the competition. And the last one on the platform is the winner, who can receive classmates’ congratulations. Students can consolidate the knowledge in thus interesting way. And if possible, the new words can become entrenched information in long-term memory. Furthermore, teachers can check whether students have grasped what they learnt.#p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#
 
The above case shows that Situational Language Teaching is good for developing students’ interest of learning English. In teaching process, through a variety of interesting situations, mobilize the enthusiasm of students to study initiatively. As a type of teaching method, Situational Language Teaching makes classroom atmosphere more active and fully establish the dominant position of students. In conclusion, Situational Language Teaching enables English vocabulary teaching of junior middle schools to be more vivid and active.
 
4.5 Suggestions on implementing Situational Language Teaching in English vocabulary teaching in junior middle schools
 
Situational Language Teaching does have its advantages in teaching vocabulary in Chinese context. It applies a situation to presenting and consolidating new words. The meaning of new words is conveyed with clear visually, such as, objects, pictures and actions, and not just through literal explanation or translation. But there is nothing in the world is flawless and perfect. Situational Language Teaching also has some limitations. So there are some suggestions on implementing Situational Language Teaching in vocabulary teaching. Firstly, for students in junior, it is difficult to actively learn or construct their own knowledge, they like something to be presented and they like imitation. But lots of drills of practice may on the other hand destroy students’ learning enthusiasm. On the occasion, teachers had better to apply different situations to attract students’ interest. Secondly, the author likes to mention is the use of target language in teaching class. In order to create a good English learning environment, some teachers will have class all in English including some complex explanation of language points. But it is difficult for students in initial stage of learning to understand. On this occasion, native language is acceptable to be employed. Last but not least, a method that can be considered beneficial in one context may not be so in another. Professor Chen Jianlin thinks that “there are many approaches in language teaching history. Each of them has its own basic theories and characteristics and neither of them can be taken as the best one nor the worst one.” (Chen Jianlin, 2009: 147) Therefore, the author advises that when using Situational Language Teaching method, teachers had better take consideration of their own teaching objectives and context. For only in appropriate context will it produce expected results.
 
5. Conclusion
 
This paper introduces the application of Situational Language Teaching to English vocabulary teaching in junior middle school. Situational Language Teaching is an effective approach well combining advanced teaching principles with concepts. But if teachers want to apply it to English teaching, they must master the nature of Situational Language Teaching and the basic principles of design situations firstly. What is more, in order to make the most advantage of Situational Language Teaching, teachers still need improve this method through numberless practice. That is why the best teaching method always comes from numerous trials and errors.#p#分頁標(biāo)題#e#
 
Finally, the Situational Language Teaching may help teachers to solve problems in various teaching situations, such as students’ unwilling to talk in English and vocabulary learning’s not interesting. But it does not mean that teachers can cast away useful traditional activities for their students. In order to give their students the most benefits, every teacher should develop one’s own teaching methods.
 
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Acknowledgements
 
I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me during the writing of this thesis. A special acknowledgement should be shown to my introductor Li Jing, from whose guidance I benefit greatly. I am particularly grateful to my roommates, who gave me kind encouragement and useful instructions all through my writing. Finally I wish to extend my thanks to the library assistants who supplied me with reference materials of great value.