Discussion on English Vocabulary Teaching in Senior School.doc

论高中英语词汇教学discussion on english vocabulary teaching in senior schoolcontentsabstract.1key words.1i. introduction.2ii. literature review2 1. brief history of vocabulary teaching.2 2. vocabulary teaching strategies research in the west.3 3. vocabulary teaching in china.4 4. summary.4iii. the present situation of vocabulary teaching in senior schools.5iv. distinguishing features of english vocabulary.6v. efficient techniques in vocabulary teaching in senior school. 7 1. teaching symbolic meaning . 7 2. using prefixes, roots, and suffixes.7 3. using synonym and antonym.8 4. imaging words.8 5. offering special lexical production exercise.9 6. asking students to write.9 7. playing game.9 8. knowing the culture background .10vi. studying and drilling.11vii. conclusion.12references.12abstract: vocabulary is one of the three elements of a language. in this thesis, it is argued that learning english vocabulary makes great contribution to the development of grammar, listening, speaking, reading and writing, and to the enrichment of english culture knowledge. in english teaching, especially in senior schools, if vocabulary is centered and emphasized, the problem of “time-consuming and poorly-efficient” english teaching will be solved. emphasis on vocabulary is reasonable and feasible. however, vocabulary study has long been ignored both by learners and schools. teachers think it is impossible and unnecessary to give vocabulary teaching and students themselves should be responsible for their increase in vocabulary. however, students put it aside because they are not scored according to the amount of vocabulary. this practice causes to make slow progress in english learning. to solve this problem, the thesis points out the importance of vocabulary in english study, reviews the related literature, elaborate the present situation of vocabulary teaching in senior schools, and offers some efficient techniques for vocabulary teaching. at last, it points out how to use these techniques in the context and suggests the whole procedures of vocabulary teaching in senior school.key words: vocabulary teaching; senior school; efficient techniques摘 要：词汇是语言的三大要素之一。本文认为，英语词汇学习对英语语法和听说读写的提高有着举足轻重的意义，同时认为词汇学习对英语文化知识的提高也大有好处。在英语教学中，特别是在高中英语教学中，如果能重视并强化词汇教学，英语教学中的“费时低效”问题就能得到解决。强调词汇教学有其合理性和可行性，但是，词汇教学长期以来被教师和学生所忽视。教师认为不可能也不必要进行词汇教学，词汇学习是学生自己的事。学生则因为考试成绩并不以词汇量多少来衡量而把词汇学习抛在一边。这种做法导致英语学习进展缓慢。为解决这一问题，本文指出了英语学习中词汇的重要性，回顾了相关文献，阐述了当今高中英语词汇教学的形势，提出了一些有效的英语词汇教学方法。最后，本文讨论了如何在教学中运用这些方法，并针对高中英语词汇教学的整体步骤，给出了自己的建议。关键词: 词汇教学；高中；有效的方法 i. introductionenglish is one of most important language, with a long history, abundant vocabulary, and succinct grammar. when learning grammar, one has to master of phonetics, grammar and vocabulary. in other words, one has pronounce words and expressions correctly and read sentences or passages fluently. besides, grammar rules are very useful and important, as sentences and passages are formed accordingly. another important and vital part is vocabulary, with which this present thesis will deal.words are the basic sense units of a language just as bricks are the basic construction blocks of a building. without grammar, little can be conveyed, but without words, nothing can be expressed. when you spend most of your time learninggrammar, your english will not improve very much. however, you will see great improvement if you learn more words and expressions. the development of languagecompetence is one of the most important steps in the development of communicative ability, while words are the basic and kernel part of communication, which directly influence ones ability of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. only mastering enough vocabulary, can one possibly understand what others say and what others write, and can one express ones thought fluently and communicate with others satisfactorily and successfully.students in middle schools are mostly beginners of the english language. no mater how well a student learns grammar, no mater how successfully the sounds of l2 are mastered, without words to express a wider range of meanings, communication in an l2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way. knowing words is the key to understanding and being understood. the bulk of learning a new language consists of learning new words. grammatical knowledge does not make for great proficiency in a language. the lexicon may be the most important component for learners. therefore, how vocabulary should be taught and learnt is of great importance. all english teachers of senior schools should take this into consideration because it is the base for english learning. it should be understood that vocabulary teaching is one of the most important segments through out the whole procedure of english teaching and learning.ii. literature review1. brief history of vocabulary teachingthe status vocabulary in language teaching in the west has varied considerably over the years. it suffered significant neglect during the 1950s and 1960s with a dominant influence on audio-legalism and methodology, but made something of a comeback during 1970s under the influence of communicative language teaching. and since the 1980s, it has been attracting increasing attention with the mushroom amount of experimental studies, pedagogical and reference material being published about this period. the field of vocabulary nowadays is increasingly the centre of the attention.2. vocabulary teaching strategies research in the westa number of studies have been conducted in an attempt to seek a general picture of vocabulary teaching strategies employed by l2/fl learners. the following is the representative ones:1) krushens input hypothesis krushen (1989), a leading proponent of extensive reading argues that language earners acquire vocabulary and spelling cost efficiently by receiving comprehensible input while reading. he claims that this results from the input hypothesis, i.e. successful. language learning results comprehensible input as the essential external ingredient coupled with a powerful internal language acquisition device. instead of more traditional pedagogical approaches to l2 vocabulary learning, krushen advocates massive quantities of pleasure reading in the students own area of interest as well as large quantities of light low-risk material that students are not tested on. in short, he believes that the input hypothesis is more efficient than other hypothesis moreover, even if it were not, it is a much more pleasurable process, and students will learn all the vocabulary they need from context by reading extensively, as long as there is successful comprehension.2) lawson and donald. (1996)lawson and donald. (1996) made an investigation into vocabulary teaching strategies used on foreign students. using a think-aloud method, they observed the behavior of 15 austrians senior school students during their attempt to learn twelve italian words presented in sentences. the data analysis show that the procedure used most frequently involved some forms of repetition of new words as well as their meaning whereas relatively little attention have been given to the physical or grammatical features of the words and much less attention to more elaborate acquisition procedures. on the contrary, correlation analysis demonstrated that elaborate acquisition procedures were more useful for recall of words than those based on repetition. as a result, they suggest that there should be a need to prompt vocabulary learning procedures more directly during language instruction.3. vocabulary teaching in china while some linguist claim that little or no classroom attention was give to vocabulary in the past(carter: 1987),chinese educators, experts and teachers always attached great importance to english instruction ever since the implementation of the opening and reform policy. during the 1990s, quite a few chinese researchers made striking contributions into the exploration of english vocabulary teaching. for example, ren cheng (1993) mentioned enlarging students english vocabulary by making use of their existing based on his experience; wen qiufang (1996) published a book “english teaching strategies” expounding the teaching strategies system, the innate factor of the system as well as how to coordinate and control other factors affecting strategy selection; and bai renli (1999) introduced several vocabulary acquisitions issues explored in western countries.1) gu and johnson gu and johnson investigate vocabulary strategies employed by chinese middle school students and the relationship between their strategy use and language proficiency. 850 students were required to complete a questionnaire of vocabulary learning. the responses to the questionnaire then correlated with the results of a vocabulary size test. the outcome of the investigation demonstrated that the subjects employed a wide range of strategies including note-explaining, face to face show, and game in their english teacher teaching process. they report that chinese teachers use more meaning-oriented strategies than memorization strategies. however, the emphasis of study lies in the relationship between english vocabulary teaching strategies and general english proficiency. gu and johnson only offer a rough description of vocabulary teaching strategies.2) cai xin cai xin (1998) studied chinese senior middle school students on their english vocabulary teaching strategies. he stated that students consciously or unconsciously applied learning strategies in their vocabulary learning such as met cognitive strategies and cognitive strategies. acquisition from the context was a stronger predictor of vocabulary size than repetition. there was a close relation between the frequency of strategy use of vocabulary size and students with a large vocabulary size were more skillful in the application of strategies than those with a small vocabulary size.4. summaryfrom the cited researches on vocabulary teaching strategies both in the west and china, it can be inferred that english teachers consciously or unconsciously make use of various strategies in their vocabulary teaching. however, all the results of the previously mentionedthat researches show that english learners are still in great need of guidance in their vocabulary learning. additionally, old methods of vocabulary teaching cant meet the demand of the new times. therefore, increasing research should be undertaken in senior high school, hence the research presented in this thesis.iii. the present situation of vocabulary teaching in senior schoolsduring much of the twentieth century, vocabulary was neglected in programs for teachers. for many years, programs that prepared language teachers gave little attention to vocabulary teaching. some books appeared to be telling teachers that students could learn all the words they needed without help. influenced by this, more and more students seem to believe that, in english examinations, more emphasis should be placed upon reading comprehension and objective testing questions than on subjective ones, and that it is not necessary to spend much time on vocabulary. what is worse, many teachers also hold this kind of ideas. in the practice of teaching, manyteachers spend much time in developing students reading ability and skills for examination. even in the course of vocabulary teaching, teachers seem not to have enough knowledge and experience to guide vocabulary teaching and students vocabulary learning. as a matter of fact, with the increase of comprehensive and applicative question, vocabulary teaching is becoming more and more important. besides, vocabulary learning is not just for examinations, but for students consolidation of basic knowledge so that they themselves will be able to learn englishout of class.on the other hand, teachers are sometimes told that they ought not to teach many words before their students have mastered the grammar and the sound system of the language. some teachers believe that words should not be taught by teachers, but should be accumulated by students themselves. influenced by this kind of ideas, vocabulary teaching in china has not been laid enough emphasis upon. in senior school, many students believe that, to learn english well, the key step is to master grammar. they think their english is poor just because of their inadequate mastery of grammar. one result is that some chinese students are able to an analyze grammar much better than many foreign teachers, but their practical ability of using english is very poor. another result is that in many senior school classes, even when teachers have devoted much time to vocabulary teaching, the results have been disappointing. the reality is that some bad effects have arisen owing to ignoring vocabulary teaching. if we can pay much attention to vocabulary teaching, the conditions are likely to be greatly changed. the responsibility of english teachers lies not only in conveying vocabulary knowledge to students, but also in studying and imparting techniques of vocabulary learning to students. they should teach students how to learn vocabulary effectively and successfully.iv. distinguishing features of english vocabularybefore studying the better techniques in vocabulary teaching, teachers had better know about the characteristics of english words. english words are quite different from chinese characters; the former one is a spelling system while the later is a stroke system. english words have three distinguishing features:firstly, the pronunciation of each word is corresponded to its spelling. for example, look at the following two lists of words: old, cold, hold, whole, so u smart, artist, mark, garden a: in list the letter “o” in the five words are all pronounced as u; and in list the letter combination “ar” in the four words are pronounced as a:. if students have noticed this relationship between english pronunciation and spelling, they would be easier in pronouncing and memorizing new words. but with along history of development and variation, and with the influence by other languages, the spelling of english words dont always observe this rule; for example, the letter “u” is pronounced differently in the following words: uncle, until, fullu, musicju:, truthu:.in another case, with the influence of american accent, the word “clerk” is also pronounced as kl:k.another feature of english words is that they frequently have more than one meaning. the word “book”, for example, obviously refers to something you use to read from (a written work in the form of ) a set of printed pages fastened together inside a cover, as a thing to be read, according to one learners dictionary. but the same dictionary then goes on to list eight more meanings of “book” as a noun, two meanings of “book” as a verb and three meanings where “book” preposition makes phrasal verbs. so we will have to say that the word “book” sometimes means the kind of thing you read from, but it can also mean a number of other things. when we come across a word, then, and try to decipher its meaning we will have to look at the context in which it is used. if we see a woman in a theatre arguing at the ticket office saying, “but i booked my tickets three weeks ago.” we will obviously understand a meaning of the verb “book” which is different from a policeman (accompanied by an unhappy-looking man at a police station) saying to his colleague “we booked him for speeding.” in other words, students need to understand the importance of meaning in context.the third characteristic is that english words can change their shape and their grammatical values, too. students need to know facts about word formation and how to twist words to fit different grammatical contexts. thus the verb “run” has the participles “running” and “ran”, the present participle “running” can be used as an adjective and “run” can also be a none. there is a clear relationship between the words “death”, “dead”, “dying” and “die”. students also need to know how suffixes and prefixes work. how can we make the words potent and expensive opposite in meaning? why do we preface one with in- and the other with im-? knowing the three distinguishing characteristics of english vocabulary will help teachers to deliver vocabulary teaching.v. efficient techniques in vocabulary teaching in senior schoolknowing the three distinguishing characteristics of english vocabulary, some key techniques in vocabulary teaching should be taken into consideration.1. teaching symbolic meaningmany words contain strong symbolic meanings, when seen from structures. so teachers should attach importance to the teaching of phonetic motivation.for example, consonant cluster “sl”sl, when being the beginning part of a word, often takes on the meaning of “嘶溜，滑，猾”in chinese: slip, slide; sled; slop; slump; sly.“sn -”sn, is often used to mean“鼻音，轻蔑” in chinese:snore (打 呼噜)，snuffy(带鼻音的)，snort(哼声说)“sk-” sk, often refers to the contact with surface:skate (溜冰)，skim(从表面撕去)，skin(表面，皮肤)the sound m, is often contained in words related to “mother” and “female”: mother, mama, mummy, mum, mammy; maternal; milk, mistress, maid, marry, mammal.2. using prefixes, roots, and suffixesin english, words are not combined completely by roots. most words are coined jointly w