Vocabulary Teaching and Leaning in Senior School.doc

高中英语教学中的词汇教学vocabulary teaching and leaning in senior schoolabstract: lexical competence is a central part of communicative competence, and teaching vocabulary a central part of teaching language, especially in the language learning of the middle school students. english vocabulary teaching and learning is a complex process, which is related to various factors, and learning strategy is one of the most important factors. however, during the teaching process in senior school in china, teachers give little attention to techniques for helping students learn vocabulary. it leads the current situation where students are involved in learning by rote and pattern training mechanically. with the study of literatures from home and abroad, and the analysis of the current situations of english vocabulary teaching and learning in senior school in china, this paper sums up some appropriate and practicable strategies in english vocabulary teaching and learning in senior school, and presents some suggestions.key words: vocabulary; teaching and learning; strategy; suggestions摘要：词汇运用能力是语言交流能力的核心，词汇教学是语言教学的核心，尤其是高中语言教学。英语词汇学习是一个复杂的过程，它涉及的因素是多元的、多层次的，而学习策略则是最重要的因素之一。但是，在我国高中英语教学实践中，教师忽略了教授学生词汇学习技巧的重要性。导致学生机械的死记硬背的词汇学习现状。本文通过对国内外文献资料的研究，对我国高中英语词汇教学现状的分析，总结出合适可行的高中英语词汇教学方法，策略，并提出一些建议。关键词：词汇；教学；策略；建议contents. introduction.1a. the importance of vocabulary and vocabulary teaching and leaning strategy. .1b. current situation of vocabulary teaching and learning in senior school2. literature review.3a. study of theories.31. cognitive theory.3 2. monitor theory.3b. definition of learning strategies .4c. study of vocabulary teaching and leaning strategies.5iii. applying the teaching and learning strategies in senior school.6a. what to teach and learn about vocabulary knowledge.6b. some principles of vocabulary teaching.71. the stage principle of vocabulary teaching.7 2. system principle.7 3. communication principle.8 4. emotion principle.8 5. culture principle.8c. suggestions on vocabulary teaching and learning in senior school.8 1. discovery strategies.9 2. consolidation strategies.9. conclusion.12works cited. 13appendix.14. introductionall the words in a language make up what is generally know as its vocabulary. the term vocabulary is used in different senses. not only can it refer to the total number of the words in a language, but it can stand for all the words used in a particular historical period. we also use it to refer to all the words of a given dialect, a given book, a given discipline. english is one of the worlds highly developed languages. naturally the vocabulary is one of the largest and richest (zhang 1). vocabulary is undoubtedly important in language study. its the basis for the development of the 5 skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation. the senior high school english curriculum standards makes great demands on vocabulary in language studies, while vocabulary is believed to be the biggest obstacle in students english learning. some researchers hold that learning strategies may affect students vocabulary acquisition and english learning. therefore, the study in vocabulary learning strategy may be a key for the effectiveness of english learning and teaching.a. the importance of vocabulary and vocabulary teaching and leaning strategy “without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed” (wilkins 111). “no matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of l2 are mastered, without words to express a wider range of meanings, communication in a l2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way” (schmitt and mccarthy 140). as krashen writes in his book the natural approach that “of the two tools for communication: vocabulary and grammar, the former is clearly the most essential one.” nation claims that if learners need to cover the whole range of language skills, then a productive vocabulary of around 3,000 base words and larger receptive vocabularies are needed(nation 2). many students lose their interest in english because they find it hard to learn the words by heart. as a matter of fact, to most chinese students, the first major problem they meet during english study is vocabulary learning (吴霞 24).vocabulary, as one of the three essential components that constitute language knowledge, is the basic building material of all languages. experienced teachers of english as a second language know very well how important vocabulary is. they know students must learn thousands of words that speakers and writers of english use. students are required to master a quantity of words and useful expressions in different periods. however, programs that prepare language teachers give little attention to techniques for helping students learn vocabulary. in senior school in china, the current foreign language teaching is that many teachers feel that grammar should be emphasized more than vocabulary, because vocabulary was already being given too much in the classroom and students would make mistakes if too many words were learned before the basic grammar had been mastered. so, during the teaching process, little time is spend on vocabulary, or the vocabulary is taught under a teaching process lacking of reliable theories and effective methods. english vocabulary teaching and learning is a complex process, which is related to various factors, and learning strategy is one of the most important factors. therefore it is vital and timely to give senior students learning strategy training because it meets senior students needs and conforms to their psychological characteristics; and students are willing and have capability of having strategy training. more importantly, learning strategy training is an important way of developing students self-reliant ability and overall quality; and it is a reflection of teaching reform.b. current situation of vocabulary teaching and learning in senior schoolvocabulary is so essential that both students and teachers should pay great attention to it in english learning and teaching. students must stick to it not only because it is the foundation but also because important skills can be developed while vocabulary learning is carried on. in teaching, strategy is a scientific english teaching method to develop students vocabulary quickly and effectively. however, the survey and observations from 200 students in grade two in the second middle school in shihezi, shows that vocabulary teaching and learning is rather weak in senior schools where there are the largest groups of english learners. the vocabulary test paper is self-made with the intention of finding out students vocabulary size and their grasp of form and meaning of each word listed on the paper. the vocabulary test paper contains 100 words which are picked out at random (words in every 70 out of 3500 words listed in the glossary of the senior high school english curriculum standards (trial edition, 2003). the result shows that students vocabulary is very limited. the average of vocabulary is 39 words out of 100 tested words. students awareness of vocabulary learning is weak and most students think vocabulary learning is nothing than tough memorizing work. overall, too little attention has been paid to vocabulary. it does not go too far to claim that inadequacy of vocabulary teaching and learning in schools leads to a vicious circle. some students big headache and greatest obstacle in english learning is vocabulary development. because of limited vocabulary, they have serious difficulties with language activities of listening, speaking, reading and writing. as a result, students become less and less interested in english learning. they are discouraged and give it up little by little. because of lack of repetition and practice, their vocabulary learning becomes even worse and they have greater trouble in later learning.some teachers hold that it is unnecessary to make great efforts to teach vocabulary, only providing a phonetic transcription and chinese translation for every new word, as they consider it the students task to memorize the new vocabulary. contrarily, some teachers try to teach their students various aspects of every word all at once. they teach everything they can find in dictionaries and other reference books. but the tragedy is that both the teachers and the students know nothing of the importance of vocabulary teaching and learning strategies. what makes it worse is they dont employ them effectively. literature reviewgiven the current focus on vocabulary study, it might be surprising when we learn that, in past years, this area of teaching was often neglected because it was undervalued and thought that vocabulary could be left to take care of itself. fortunately, by the late 1970s and early 1980s more and more voices began to challenge this view with the shift from teacher-center to learner-center. there are many people pay attention to vocabulary teaching and learning. nation gives a good answer to the question “should vocabulary be taught”. nation suggests that teaching students strategies is especially important when it comes to dealing with low frequency words (34). at the same time, many new second language theories were proposed. a number of theories of second language acquisition were formulated; the research literature abounds in approaches, theories, models, laws, and principles which study about vocabulary teaching and learning. these studies help teachers and students to teach and learn effectively and quickly.a. study of theories1. cognitive theorypsychologists and psycholinguists view second language learning as the acquisition of a complex cognitive skill. it explains how information is stored in memory and particularly how information is acquired. cognitive learning theory also claims that the role of learning strategies is very important in the process of acquiring new information. language learning is a very complex social and psychological activity, cognitive psychology claims that there are usually four steps before new information is accepted: (1) choice. some special interesting information in the surroundings is chosen and stored in the working brain (short-term memory). (2) acquisition. learners make efforts to change the information in the short-term memory into long-term memory. (3) construction. learners actively build up a connection among the information stored in the short-term memory with the help of relevant information in the long-term memory, and provide new schemas to organize new information. (4) synthesizing. information is sought in the long-term memory and then turned into short-term memory. in fact, the process that learners choose, acquire, construct and synthesize new language or knowledge is the process that they adopt cognitive learning strategies (束定芳 庄智象 35).2. monitor theory stephen krashens monitor theory is one of the most influential and well-known theories of second language acquisition. in the late 1970s krashen developed the monitor model, an “overall” theory of second language acquisition that had important implications for language teaching. it is a macro theory attempting to cover most of the factor involved in second language acquisition: age, personality traits, classroom instruction, innate mechanisms of language acquisition, environmental influences, input, etc. the input hypothesis has both theoretical and practical importance in that it attempts to answer what is perhaps the most important question in the second language learning by emphasizing the comprehensible input in second language acquisition. the input hypothesis is a major offshoot of the monitor model. if an acquirer is at the stage or level i, the input he or she understands should contain “i+1”. in other words, the language that the learners are exposed to should be just far enough beyond their current level of competence that they can understand most of it but still be comprehensible and challenging to make progress (66). what is important is that the input of language should neither be too far beyond their reach that they are overwhelmed such as “i+2”, nor so close to their current stage that they are not challenged at all, such as “i+0”. speech will “emerge” once the acquirer has built up enough comprehensible input (i +l).b. definition of learning strategies“strategy” comes from the ancient greek word “strategia”, which means “steps or actions generally take for the purpose of winning a war”. though its old meaning has fallen away, the control and goal-directedness remain in the modern version of the word (oxford 90). different researchers have different opinions on the definition of els.what nations description in teaching and learning vocabulary is: “to fully grasp a word, it requires grasping its meaning, spelling, pronunciation, collocation, grammar, style, association, frequency and so on” (7). it is necessary to decide what vocabulary will be selected for teaching, how it will be sequenced, how it will be presented and how to encourage students to learn the words efficiently. that is learning strategy. here are some famous definitions of strategy:“learning strategies are strategies which contribute to the development to the language system which the learner constructs and affect learning directly” (rubin 19).“language learning strategies are behaviors or actions which learners use to make language learning more successful, self-directed and enjoyable” (oxford 45).obviously, no strong consensus has been reached on the definition of language learning strategies. the above-cited definitions show diverse opinions about language learning strategies. they emphasizes two important pointsthe aim of using learning strategies is to learn effectively; the essence of learning strategies is the learners action rather than their thoughts and the action can be external or internal.c. study of vocabulary teaching and leaning strategiesto students, oxford believes that learners who have developed appropriate learning strategies have greater self-confidence and learn more effectively. to teachers, oxford argues that teachers should teach students how to continue to improve their vocabulary on their own by teaching them appropriate vocabulary learning strategies (179). as to vocabulary concrete teaching techniques, allen makes a great contribution to them in the book titled techniques in teaching vocabulary. she thinks that vocabulary is best learned when it is encouraged in the classroom situation when the learner perceives a need for it. she categorizes students general needs by the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels and points out concrete teaching techniques according to the three categories (78). in order to capture and organize the wide variety of vocabulary learning strategies identified, oxfords strategy system consists of four strategy groups: social, memory, cognitive, and meta-cognitive. “social strategies use interaction with other people to improve language learning. approaches that relate new material to existing knowledge fall into the memory strategies category. cognitive strategies exhibit the common function of manipulation or transformation of the target language by the learner. finally, meta-cognitive strategies involve a conscious overview of the learning process and making decisions about planning, monitoring, or evaluating the best ways to study” (schmitt and mccarthy 205). compare with the research in the west, china involve in this field late. but there are also some good researches on vocabulary teaching and learning. wen qiufang, in her book on english learning strategies, expounds learning strategy system, the innate factors of the system as well as how to coordinate and control other factors affecting strategies selection (56). wang wenyu researches into chinese junior students english vocabulary learning strategies at nanjing university, using a questionnaire and a vocabulary test. from his result, he concludes that their vocabulary size is significantly associated with their vocabulary learning strategies (47-52). wu xia researches into the relation between reading comprehension and vocabulary size in middle schools and urges to pay more attention to students vocabulary size (86). shen nan bases on the current teaching condition, puts forward to five vocabulary teaching principles (152-153). at the same time, various useful approaches to english vocabulary teaching, such as teaching words in natural and authentic environment, association, etc. are proposed. in fact, early in 2000, yao meilin has a summary of current research trends in the teaching of foreign vocabulary learning strategies and divides them into three stages-its definition and classification, exploration of effective approaches to strategies teaching, and the establishment of models for teaching strategies (54). applying the teaching and learning strategies in senior schoola. what to teach and learn about vocabulary knowledgeto the senior school students, what does it mean to know a word? a simple answer to this question would be (1) knowing its pronunciation and stress; (2) knowing its spelling and grammatical properties; (3) knowing its meaning; (4) knowing how and when to use it to express the intended meaning. however, learning a word involves learning