A Study of Student-centered English Vocabulary Teaching.doc

毕业论文(设计)A Study of Student-centered English Vocabulary Teaching1. Introduction22.The importance of vocabulary teaching33. The problems existing in traditional vocabulary teaching and learning43.1 Problems existing in teachers vocabulary teaching43.1.1 Teachers neglect the importance of vocabulary53.1.2 Teachers neglect teaching techniques53.1.3 Teachers neglect seleting vocabulary63.2 Problems existing in students vocabulary learning73.2.1 The inefficiency of learning words73.2.2 The inefficiency of memorizing words84. The student-centered vocabulary teaching mode84.1 The definition of student-centered teaching mode84.2 Charateristics of student-centered teaching mode94.2.1More humanistic94.2.2 More communicative104.2.3 More cooperative104.3 The relationship between teachers and students in the student-centered vocabulary teaching mode114.3.1 The teachers role in student-centered vocabulary teaching mode114.3.2The students role in student-centered vocabulary teaching mode124.4 The advantages of student-centered vocabulary teaching mode134.4.1 Helping to improve teachers teaching techniques134.4.2 Helping to attract the students attention and inspiring their learning interests144.4.3 A challenge to both the teacher and students155. Application of student-centered vocabulary teaching mode155.1 Presentation165.1.1 Use real objects to show meanings165.1.2 Draw pictures, diagrams175.1.3 Role exchange185.2 Practice and consolidation195.2.1 Describing and drawing195.2.2 Playing games205.2.3 Words series206. Conclusion21References221. IntroductionEnglish as a global language, plays an increasingly important part in the world. In our country, the demand for people who can successfully communicate in English is becoming more important as China faces increasing international investment opportunities and the entering of WTO. In China, students are required to begin to learn English when they are in primary school. However, even they have began to attack to English learning for so many years, when they listen to native English speakers, they would feel very painful. Even the university graduates often find themselves in embarrassing situations when they are required to speak in English or listen to native English speakers. They often would not make a fluent and logical sentence, and they would not understand what is being said when they are using English to talk with others.Why would this happen? The most important of the factors that causes such situation is that they dont have enough vocabulary, so when they talk to foreigners, they cant find suitable words to express themselves.As we all know that vocabulary is the material of language construction. Without it , the language would lose its actual meaning. That is just like to cook dinner without rice. Vocabulary teaching plays an important role in English teaching. When we talk to English speakers, we need to have a store of vocabulary, which we can select from freely when we wish to express our thoughts. For students, mastering a certain number of vocabulary is the key to learn English.For students, their assignment is to enlarge their store of vocabulary, while for the teachers, their assignment is to teach students how to learn vocabulary. The purpose of teaching vocabulary is to make the students master the vocabulary, use the vocabulary freely and lay the base for their English learning. In order to achieve this purpose, educators from home and abroad have been researching the approaches of English teaching. No matter what kind of approach they adopt, they must make sure that their teaching is based on the students. Because the student is the body of the teaching, the teacher just plays a leading role. All teaching activities must focus on the students. As a result, the student-centered teaching mode is highly used in teaching vocabulary.2.The importance of vocabulary teachingIn teaching a foreign language, one of the most important aspects is to enlarge students vocabulary. A large, useful vocabulary is the basic of word power. Word to an essay is brick to a building or molecules to a substance. Small as they are, unimportant they are not. Apart from the correct and good usage of words, there can be no effective listening, speaking, reading and writing. One of the famous linguists Wilkins once said that: “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” (Wilkins, English Study, 1987) Therefore, it is not grammar or syntax but vocabulary that makes it difficult to master a language.Teaching a vocabulary is of great importance in learning a language, and vocabulary has become one of the vital standards in Engish study. For example, with the reference of Syllabus for TEM Four and TEM Eight, English majors are require to master 5000 to 6000 words for TEM Four and 9000 to 12000 words for TEM Eight. 3. The problems existing in traditional vocabulary teaching and learningNowadays vocabulary teaching is playing a fundamentally important and active role in language teaching and learning. People are taking a new interest in it, and there are an increasing number of studies on it at home and abroad. It is believed that the traditional way of vocabulary teaching is time-consuming and low effective, and there are some misunderstandings in vocabulary teaching and learning, which cause many problems. This makes the vocabulary classes less effective.3.1 Problems existing in teachers vocabulary teachingVocabulary teaching is an important part in English teaching. However, most of the English teachers today neglect the importance of vocabulary teaching, they pay little attention to the cultivation of students ability to learn vocabulary actively and independently. In this case, the students easily forget words learned before. The most terrible thing is that students cannot put learned words into practice.3.1.1 Teachers neglect the importance of vocabularyFirstly, in traditional vocabulary teaching mode, teachers leave vocabulary learning to students themselves. Some teachers believe that students could learn all the words they need without help. In fact, teachers are sometimes told that they ought not to teach too many words before their students have mastered the grammar and the sound system of the language. In some teaching monograph, vocabulary is seldom mentioned. Pronunciation and grammar were emphasized, but there is little or no emphasis on vocabulary. So teachers tend to neglect the importance of vocabulary.3.1.2 Teachers neglect teaching techniquesSecondly, while teaching vocabulary, teachers often neglect teaching techniques. Many teachers do not seem to take a systematic approach to vocabulary teaching. Some of them, especially the old teachers, often prepare lessons just before class, and there is no long-term planning. Besides, in the traditional teaching mode, the vocabulary teaching is a teacher-dominated one. During the class, teachers play as the controller, they dominate the whole teaching process, and they maximize the teachers talking time and mimimize the students talking time. When teaching new words, the teachers just tell the meaning of the words directly and neglect taking creative measures and techniques to arouse the students attention to vocabulary study.3.1.3 Teachers neglect seleting vocabularyThirdly, when teachers teach vocabulary, they often neglect seleting words, and tend to teach all the words that appear in the text. In the vocabulary list of the textbooks, it has already pointed out which words are important words, and needs the students to master them. However, some teachers afraid that the words they didnt teach would appear in the test, so they teach all the words. This resulted in that students would get the words all mixed up, and it would also overload the students memory. In fact, students do not need to learn every word they meet. It is because not all words are equally useful. A convenient division for the levels of vocabulary is shown in the accompanying table adapted from the bookSecond Language Vocabulary Acquisition (2001: 239) .Table 1. A Convenient Division for the Levels of VocabularyLevelNumber of wordsText coverage, %High-frequency words2,00087Academic vocabulary8008Technical vocabulary2,0003Low-frequency words123,0002Total128,000100Through this table, the teachers could clearly know that the 2,000 high-frequency words of English should receive attention first. With these words, it is possible for people to use English in any normal way (James Coady & Thomas Huckin, 2001, 239).3.2 Problems existing in students vocabulary learning3.2.1 The inefficiency of learning wordsChinese affects vocabulary learning. In this situation, it is very hard for students to understand the relationship among meaning, pronunciation and formation. So students feel vocabulary learning difficult. For example, when they learn “take”, “make” and later come across “lake”, they do not know how to use the knowledge they learned to read it. On the other hand, teachers do not know how to use the effective way to draw students attention. Therefore, students lose interest in learning. For one thing, students cannot use the words in communication flexibly. During the process of vocabulary learning, because of the environmental limitation and the lack of learning techniques, the students always remember the meaning without certain collocation or cultural background, they can not understand and use these words effectively when they have conversations. Even when they come across a phrase which contains no new words, such as “green eyes”, they dont understand its real meaning beacause of lacking of cultural knowledge.For another thing, many students learn vocabulary in ineffective ways. Rote learning is a typical ineffective way. So it is important to make students aware that not all words are equally important and that effective ways of vocabulary learning help to reduce forgetting. 3.2.2 The inefficiency of memorizing wordsMany students spend a lot of time learning vocabulary, but most of them still complain that their vocabulary is not enough and they cannot avoid forgetting the words.It is easier for students to recognize the words than consolidate and remember them. Here are some reasons: First, memory has a regular pattern. Rob Waring said: “Brains are designed to forget, not to remember.” (Net.2) If a student has just learned 10 new words, it is normal for most of them to be forgotten within a few days, and maybe only one or two will be remained in the medium or long term. This is what Rob Waring calls the Forgetting Curve”. Second, there is very low recycling of vocabulary in course books. Most words, which are learned before seldom appear in the next unites, or even in the same book. If the words cannot be consolidated in time, they would be forgotten quickly.4. The student-centered vocabulary teaching mode4.1 The definition of student-centered teaching modeThe student-centered approach is based on the hypothesis that students who are given the freedom to explore areas based on their personal interests, and who are accompanied in their striving for solutions by a supportive, understanding facilitator not only achieve higher academic results but also experience an increase in personal values, such as flexibility, self-confidence and social skills. This approach, also known as experiential learning, requires specific personal attitudes on the side of the instructor who takes over the role of a facilitator (Rogers, 1983).4.2 Charateristics of student-centered teaching modeThe student-centered teaching mode is one of the most popular teaching approach in English teaching, and it has the following distinctive features.4.2.1More humanisticThe student-centered teaching mode contains the characteristic of humanistic. Based on views which are drawn from the school of humanistic psychology notably represented by Maslow and Rogers, language teaching is seen as an important influence on the education, resulting in student-centered teaching mode and confluent education practices which combine affective and cognitive objectives. Moskowitz (1978) defines humanistic techniques as those that “blend what the student feels, thinks and knows with what he is learning in the target languagethe techniques help build rapport, cohesiveness, and caring that far transcend what is already therehelp students to be themselves, to accept themselves, and be proud of themselveshelp foster a climate of caring and sharing in the foreign language class”(Moskowitz, 1978:2).4.2.2 More communicativeA major impetus to the development of student-centered language teaching came with the advent of communicative language teaching. In other words, the English teaching class is a communicative student-centered one. In fact, this is more a cluster of approaches than a single methodology, which grew out of the dissatisfaction with structuralism and the situational methods of the 1960s. However, a basic principle underlying all communicative approaches is that learners must learn not only to make grammatically correct, propositional statements about the experiential world, but must also develop the ability to use language to get things done. The communicative approach stresses the importance of providing learners with opportunities to use their English for communicative purposes and, characteristically, attempts to integrate such activities into a wider program of language teaching. The goal of language teaching is to develop what Hymes(1972) referred to as “communicative competence.” After all, English is a language, it should be taught as a communicative tool, not merely a kind of the knowledge of language. 4.2.3 More cooperativeIn concrete terms, the humanistic and communicative student-centered teaching mode puts high value on people accepting responsibility for their own learning, making decisions for themselves, choosing and initiating activities, expressing feelings and opinions about needs, abilities and preferences. In this framework, the teacher acts as a facilitator of others learning rather than as an implanter of knowledge. During the teaching process, cooperation is stressed. This cooperation not only means the cooperation among students, but also means the cooperation between students and teachers.4.3 The relationship between teachers and students in the student-centered vocabulary teaching modeThe teaching process concerns two characters: the teachers and the students. Whats the relationship between teachers and students in the student-centered vocabulary teaching mode is the main question that we need to answer. Teaching is the business of both the teachers and students, so during the teaching process, it involves the relationship between teachers and students. A good relationship will make learning interesting and teaching enjoyable. A bad relationship, however, can make learning dull and teaching unpleasant. As a result, the first thing teachers should do is to build a positive, friendly, supportive relationship with students.4.3.1 The teachers role in student-centered vocabulary teaching modeTo have a good teacher-student relationship, it is important that the teachers and the students understand and respect each other. In the vocabulary teaching class, teachers should be concerned with students. They should be neither too tough, nor too permissive. If they are too tough, the students would be frightened. If they are too permissive, the students would become lazy. They should take the students not themselves as the main role of the teaching process. The teacher should not be an authority or supervisor, but a stage designer and a friend. Tudor elaborates a further rolelearning counselor (1993:24) in the student-centered approach, the teacher may be seen as performing five main functions: (1) preparing learners; (2) analyzing learner needs; (3) selecting methodology; (4) transferring responsibility; (5) involving learners (Tudor, 1993: 24-28).He also suggests that teachers who are friendly, understanding and sensitive to learners needs, and who also have high cultural awareness, will be more likely to create a good learning atmosphere and to hold discussion with learners on material content, teaching methodology, and evaluation (Tudor, 1993: 28-29).4.3.2The students role in student-centered vocabulary teaching modeIn the traditional teaching approach, the students treat the teachers as the authorities of the teaching process. They are more inclined to believe what the teachers say instead of trying to work out their own answers or to solve the problems by themselves. However, every learner of a foreign language is an individual. It is true that advice from books and teachers plays an important role in the study of English, but in most cases, no one knows more about what works best for students than students themselves. Students know better than teachers which exercises are at their level and what the teacher has done makes their English vocabulary teaching class more enjoyable. All of this calls for the students subjectival status in the teaching process. But it could hardly actualize in the traditional teaching approach. While in the student-centered teaching mode, the students subjectival status could easily actualize, because the students act as the body part of the teaching process in it. In the student-centered teaching mode, it requests that students should not just sit in the classroom and write down what the teachers said quietly since they are not just the receiver of knowledge. Instead, the students talking time must be maxmized, and the students shoud be active and not dare to show their opinions during the tea