ADiscussiononProblemsinVocabularyTeaching.doc

A Discussion on Problems in Vocabulary TeachingThe aim of English teaching in high school formerly emphasized on developing the students ability of reading and English self-studying , requiring the students to master basic phonetics and grammar, and about 2,800 words and a prescribed number of frequently used phrases. During the past several decades, a practical vocabulary teaching method had been developed to meet this requirement. The old method mostly employed translation approach in teaching new vocabulary. In recent years, the textbooks of junior high school have been changed, the focus of them has shifted from reading and writing skills to listening and speaking ones. In this new situation , we have some teachers who follow the old method and try to apply it to the new teaching material on the one hand ; on the other hand, some teachers have developed new methods on teaching vocabulary in order to fit this change. Sometimes vocabulary teaching is given less attention as it has always been in language teaching. But as what Wilkins said, “without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed” (Wilins,1972:111), we should value vocabulary teaching. Thus , the question before us is which method we shall use in vocabulary teaching. Whether we should follow the old method, or accept the new ones advocated by the group of reformers. Thats what Im going to discuss in this paper.I.The disadvantages of the old and some new teaching methodsDuring the long-term teaching practice, every teaching approach has shown its advantages. Since methodology is the means to accomplish teaching tasks, a specified task should have specified teaching method. Each of them is put forward to accomplish specified teaching tasks, and shouldnt be denied totally. But while investigating into them, I noticed that they all have some disadvantages which make them fail in achieving their goals.A.The disadvantages of the old method In the long period of using the former edition of the junior high school English textbook, the goal of vocabulary teaching was mainly to enlarge the students vocabulary to help them to do better in reading comprehension, and writing instead of communication, so the words taught are rather formal and in written form. Additionally, the textbooks were more likely to teach grammar rather than vocabulary, thus, the vocabulary that appeared in the former textbooks was to meet the need of teaching grammar. Teaching methods were devised to meet these aims. From the results of the teaching, I found the traditional methods had disadvantages in three main areas:a.Lack of flexibility1.from the teaching material and syllabus aspectsThe emphasis of the former textbooks is on studying grammar and reading comprehension, the vocabulary given in the textbooks tends to be abstract or rather uninteresting to the students. Because the students of junior high schools are about 12-15 years old, their comprehension is not good enough, they have difficulties in understanding some of the vocabulary, or even worse, they dont like to learn them. Once the students have lost their interest in learning English, it would be very hard to make them feel interested in it again. Meanwhile, the arrangement of the grammar principles and vocabulary was lacking in planning, which ignored the fact that the students are led by interest rather than by reason.2.from the teacher aspect When using the former teaching material, the manner of the teacher in the class is often dull, being creative meant the teacher was likely to fail to finish teaching tasks. The teacher had to lead the students to read the new words, tell them the meanings, give them examples, and sometimes ask some students to make sentences by suing the new words, and that was all on dealing with vocabulary. Usually the atmosphere of the classroom was boring. The teacher was the center of the whole teaching process, what the students could do was to listen to the teacher. They were always in a passive position in the teaching process, their need and interest were neglected for most of the time. They seldom had opportunities to practice and show themselves. The students easily felt bored. And their attitude toward the teacher can influence directly their attitude toward the subject. Less communication between the teacher and the students led to the back-reactional psychology of the students, which affected the language acquisition of the students.b. employ too much translation approachAccording to a research carried out by Tran-Chi-Chan in1974,51 percents of errors made by students whose mother tongue is Chinese are the result of the interference of their native language(Dai Weidong & Shu Dingfang, 1994:3). In the former teaching method, the teacher usually used Chinese to explain vocabulary, grammar and texts. This had its historical and factual reasons most English teachers hadnt had enough training before they began to teach English, some teachers studied English all by themselves, they couldnt use English in teaching completely, and Chinese could help them to solve this drawback. Slt6hough this method did help the teaching of grammar, it caused the separation between language, vocabulary, grammar and the teaching of reading. c. fail to give students some easy ways to memorize vocabularyIt seems so common a problem in learning English that students always find it very difficult to memorize English words and phrases. Their teachers usually demand that they copy the words or phrases in order to memorize them. They try hard to memorize mechanically, but achieve little, several days later, their efforts often are in vain. They can get little help from their teacher. After their original efforts face failure for several times, they lose their confidence in learning English. Without teachers help, they can not find out general laws all by themselves, and this is just what the teachers who follow the old method fail to do. B.The disadvantages of some new methodsAfter using the new edition of the junior high school English textbooks , more teaching methods have been employed in vocabulary teaching, such as direct method , audio-lingual method, situational approach, and functional approach, etc. They all have their own advantages and achievements, but as for teaching vocabulary, the disadvantages are:a. paying more attention to other areasEach new method has its own particular emphasis. Direct method stresses speaking, but it pays more attention to experience and perceptual knowledge, and ignores the actives of the mother tongue. Audio-lingual method stresses on the practicality of foreign language teaching and the training of listening and speaking, it takes pattern drills as the center of foreign language teaching. However, it pays too much attention to mechanical training, neglects the need to develop the ability to master basic language knowledge and use the target language freely. Moreover, it emphasized too much on the structure of language , ignoring its content and meaning. Situational approach stresses on teaching the target language in the target language and practicing the target language in the target language, but it pays too much attention to the principle of whole structure, the function of visual instruction and language form, and it artificially severs the relationship between spoken language and written language. Functional approach stresses on developing the students ability to communicate, but it cant properly deal with the relations between language function and language structure, and it permits students errors in communicating in the target language, this is not rational as their errors can become habits that are difficult to remove.b. paying less attention to vocabulary teaching In these new teaching methods, less importance is placed on vocabulary teaching. The users of direct method teach less vocabulary, which makes students face more difficulties in reading. The users of audio-lingual method teach pattern drills rather than vocabulary, students taught by this method are not able to carry on their communication combing with the situation. The users of situational approach ignore the analysis and explanation of language units, this hinders the students from understanding and using the target language. The users of functional approach dont teach vocabulary separately, vocabulary appears in the context typical situation, and its not the focus.What Ive written is some major disadvantages I have found in old and new teaching methods.II.My way of teaching vocabularyAfter making some improvements to the methods Ive mentioned, through my experience in the teaching practice and my observation of some experienced teachers teaching of vocabulary, I summarized a set effective methods of vocabulary teaching. Im very glad to present them here in details:A.On dealing with pronunciation and spellingIn teaching vocabulary, pronunciation should be the first thing to be stressed in order to teach vocabulary well. Since there are many differences between pronunciation and spelling, as Zhang Guoyang described in his essay, there are four major reasons (Zhang Guoyang, 1983:52-53):1. Many words had come from French, the pronunciation is still French accent;2. The limited letters cannot express all the sounds, there are only five vowels in all the 26 English letters, many sounds have to be written down by the various forms of them;3. Some old spoken language was recorded down as traditional spelling, but their original pronunciation has been altered;4. English hadnt had fixed spelling forms until the movable type was introduced to Britain, at that time, a word could have a few different spelling forms.Noticing these differences, and combing witrh the last lesson ineach unit in which there are dome pronunciation principles, I use the general laws between pronunciation and spelling to help the students to pronounce the different letter combinations correctly. For example, while teaching Lesson32, Unit 8, Junior English for China Students Book 2, I did as the following:T (for teacher) : Today were going to study some letters associations, first, lets look at this phonetic symbol , please find out some words having this sound, and tell me.S (for students): Wash, fish, sure, English,.T : Whats more ? Can you name some words with letter c pronounced as ? And some with letters association ch?S : Delicious, and machine.T : Good, now turn to page 32 and look at part one, word family. We have letters association sh, ch, s and c pronounced as , we have studied many words with this sound, most of them fit this rule. In order to teach students the stress on words, I found that reading aloud is a good way. By doing this , they can realize errors by themselves and correct them, which will deepen their impression.The differences between similar pronunciations should be taught by doing pair work (Wu Yuqiang, 1983:13). For instance, the differences between s and can be put into word pairs like sink and think, sing and thing, etc. After they can distinguish the similar sounds they can grasp the relationship between pronunciation and spelling , through more practices, they can learn how to apply them into their study, thus , they will face less trouble in memorizing new words.B.On dealing with words meaning and functionThe meaning of words and their function are very important in vocabulary teaching , I think they may probably be taught through the following methods:a.using visual aids or instruction to teach words standing for concrete or visible material Example I (JEFC, Book 1)In teaching this book, many lessons need visual aids - lesson11, use true material to teach words book, map, pen and desk, etc., the beginners can understand them easily.Example II (JEPF Book 1)In teaching Unit13, “What colour is it?”, we could teach them by pointing at red things and saying “its red”, pointing at green things and saying “Its green”, etc. When they understand the meanings, we can ask them do pair work - to ask and answer “Whats the colour of it?” in pairs. While they are interested , some more words of colour can also be taught(Yun Zongling, 1991:14).Example III (JEFC, Book 1)When teaching unit 22, Lesson87 , we can teach the verbs by using body language, talk, listen, write, open, close, etc., all can be taught in this way. Conducting the action will help the students to understand the meanings.b. using situational or translation approach to teach words with abstract meaning During teaching process, situational approach can be very useful , we can design a situation to explain words such as early, late, etc., or we can use medium such as slide, record, television, etc. to accomplish our teaching tasks. Example I (JEFC, Book 1) Teaching Unit 28, Lesson 109, we can do like this;T: Now, we are going to learn words early and late. Today I came early, because the school starts at 10 oclock, but I came at 9 oclock, I come early. Can you give me another example?S: I get up at 8:30 , my mother gets up at 8 oclock, she gets up early.T: Right. The school starts at 10 oclock, Jim comes at 10:10, he comes late, please give me another example.S: I usually get up at 8:30, today I got up at 9oclock, I get up late.T: Good.Example II (JEFC, Book 2, Unit 25)The best way to teach the vocabulary in this unit is to use sketches and recorder , when the recorder reads the new words, the teacher can point at the sketches, and students will understand the new words.Sometimes , translation approach is very useful in teaching vocabulary, some words have very abstract meaning, and it is hard to find familiar and simple words to define, under this condition, Id rather use an appropriate Chinese word or phrase to illustrate. For example, when teaching the word important, to tell them the Chinese meaning may be better than making a lot of efforts to explain it in English and leaving the students still puzzled.c.using context-clue to teach students to get the meanings of some words by themselvesSometimes, when students read some material, they will meet some unfamiliar words, it is not always necessary for the teacher to explain every new word to students or for the students to stop and look up the new words in a dictionary. At this time, if the teacher teaches the students how to get the meaning of the word through the context. We can tell the students to examine the neighboring sentences or words around the new word, and find out the cleues which imply the new words meaning. The implication can be summed up as 6 types (Yang Fengning, 1994:39-40):1 definition: an author may use some other words to define the new word;2 example: an author may provide examples to the reader to illustrate the new word;3 comparison and contrast: sometimes, the meaning of the new word can be given through comparison or contrast of another similar or contrary examples;4 summary: an author also may use a summary clue sums up a situation or an idea with a word or aphrase, the reader can work out the meaning of the new word by himself;5 synonyms: very often an author just gives the meaning of an unfamiliar word by providing a word or phrase which as the same meaning as the new word, therefore, the reader can understand it;6.antonyms: the reader sometimes may find a word with the opposite meaning to the new word in the context given by the author.As long as the students check the context carefully, they can guess the meaning without asking the teacher or consulting the dictionary for help,d.teaching and encouraging the students to use dictionaryDictionary can help students to build their vocabulary. When one opens a dictionary, he can always find many things he wants to know - pronunciation, definition, function, and usage of the word or phrase. So long as students have studied the alphabets, which is the key to the use of a dictionary, there wont be many difficulties in using dictionary. Encouraging students to use dictionaries can let them get used to individualized study of new words. Though I encourage students to use dictionaries I dont mean they should rely on a dictionary, and neither do I mean they should form the habit to looking up a dictionary whenever an unfamiliar word or phrase appears.e.teaching the function of words through examplesDuring my teaching process, I found students often misuse the words in making sentences, such as using a noun as predicate, an adjective as adverb, etc. In my opinion, first we teachers should tell students that nouns can be subjects, objects, and predicative, verbs predicate, adjectives predicative, and adjectives can be used to modify nouns and pronouns, adverbs can modify verbs, and so on. Thus, the students can have an initial impression. When I begin to teach vocabulary, I require the students to pay attention to the function of every word, and give them examples of the word in sentences.Example I (JEFC, Book II, Unit 13)enjoy in ? ?i vt. like; to get happiness from sth./doing sth.e.g. 1) I enjoy your party. (predicate) (n.) 2) I enjoy reading very much. (gerund/verbal noun)Thus, enjoy+n./gerundExample II (JEFC, Book I, Unit 25)America ?merik? n. a big country in North America neighboring Canada and Mexicoe.g. 1) America is a big country, (subject)2) The fourth biggest country is America, (predicative)3) Helen comes from America, (object)When a word is put into a sentence, its much easier for the students to understand its function.C. On dealing with synonyms, hyponyms, antonyms, homonyms, etc.a.synonymsStudents often have trouble in distinguish the differences between synonyms, through componential analysis (or feat