In fact, too much emphasis on spelling has chief influence on students’ selection in vocabulary learning methods, and makes their vocabulary learning separated from the English language environment and its usage. In addition, students almost have no chance to put the words which they have learnt from the teaching materials into use. On account of the limitation of time and learning conditions, students just contact with English during the class. 

Therefore, we often hear students complain that they can’t think of the words which they recited previously and apply these words to communication. As a result, students’ ability to use vocabularies is so low that seriously hindered the mastery of their language knowledge and language skills’ training.

1.2 The purpose and significance

Vocabulary is the basic for English study, as Wilkins said “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed” (1972). However, the traditional process of teaching-receiving methods of teaching words and expressions makes a mistake of emphasizing on the spread of rational knowledge and undervaluing the accumulation of emotional experience. There is little interaction between teachers and students. Even the practice is mechanical, like Question and Answer, which aims to practicing the sentences, memorizing words. On the other hand, from the perspective of students, students play a role of audiences in the traditional teaching methods class. They only listen to the teachers mostly and there is little chance to participate in language practice.

How to teach English of middle school and how to teach well have been given great concern by more and more English teachers and educational theory workers. It is difficult to combine basic English knowledge with the communicational skills in traditional English teaching but the Situational Language Teaching Method can make up for the contradiction. It conforms to the need of the era of reform and development and can meet the social expectation of English teaching work and it also has extremely significance and influence.

The research mainly focuses on the following questions:

1.Can Situational Language Teaching Method enhance middle school students’ motivation to learn English vocabulary?

2. Can Situational Language Teaching Method improve middle school students’ achievement?

1.3 The structure

Although the study on Situational Language Teaching Method has made great progress at present, it has not been a completed and mature system. This thesis will stand on the forefront of angles through questionnaires and discussions to summarize the analysis of the situations of the middle school English classroom teaching systematically and put forward the necessity and concrete countermeasures of situational context teaching in middle school English curriculum. 

The study can be pided into five parts:

The first part is the introduction part. This part describes the background of the study, the purpose and the significance of the research and the structure of the thesis.

The second part is the literature review. It includes the definition, features and necessity of this study. And then explains theoretical basis and the research status of the Situational Language Teaching Method at home and abroad. 

The third part focuses on the research methodology. It begins with the research purpose and describes the participants and material of the study. Then it comes to instruments part, it includes questionnaire, word test and interview. The last is explaining the procedures of the experiment. 

The fourth part provides the data analysis and discussion.

The last part is to summarize the research and put forward some pieces of suggestions for future research and teaching.