文章初中英语词汇教学存在的问题及其解决策略

1、初中英语词汇教学存在的问题及其解决策略The Problems on Vocabulary Teaching in Junior Middle School and the Solutions    .Introduction   Vocabulary is one of the fundamental elements of language, the most basic element used to express ones words. It is frustrating for intermediate learners such as mi

2、ddle school students when they discover they cannot communicate effectively because they do not know many of the words they need. Unfortunately, vocabulary is neglected in some English language courses. Both teachers and students do not pay enough attention to the vocabulary learning. They do not re

3、alize the importance of teaching vocabulary in middle schools. What are the problems preventing students grasping vocabulary in English Class of Junior Middle School. Maybe some teachers teach words isolated from context, what about others? Then do you know how to solve these problems? The author co

4、nducts a survey and finds out some effective methods. The solutions here are to seek scientific techniques of teaching vocabulary. By adopting scientific teaching vocabulary techniques, teachers can help students improve their language acquisition ability and language competence.   &#

5、160; . The Importance of Teaching Vocabulary    2.1 The Definition of Vocabulary Vocabulary is all the words and phrases used in particular language. Vocabulary is the basic unit of the sentence, usually what the ones say is all formed by vocabularies. Therefore, on learning language,

6、 especially English, the vocabulary is just made of the letters one by one, only based on it we can learn phrases sentences and passages. The famous linguist Rivers also thinks, “Controlling the enough vocabulary is the key to succeeding in using English, the idea which has no vocabulary and they ca

7、n not take use of structure and function learned reads aloud.” Because “we cant neglect a giant of existence”, and in fact, the learners vocabulary size indicates his English level, as an international language, its important status gets everybodys common understanding more and more.2.2 The Importan

8、ce of Teaching Vocabulary Vocabulary learning is quite challenging. While grammar at least seems to be finite, vocabulary is virtually infinite. Words are also more complex than they appear to be on the surface. As all know, people who have studied English but havent grasped some vocabulary can hard

9、ly communicate with each other in English, especially for middle school students. Students who are immersed into a new linguistic settling tend to pick up vocabulary first, and then gradually develop a more accurate, structural framework. And they must continually be learning words as they learn str

10、uctures and as they practice the sound system. Therefore, teaching vocabulary is an indispensable part of English lesson in middle school, and an important task for the teachers. Whether a middle school English teacher can follow scientific methods to teach vocabulary or not directly bring good or b

11、ad influence toward the student. If his methods are suitable for the student and beneficial for them in the long run, he could arouse their interest on English and help them to develop a solid foundation of language acquisition ability, whereas if he fails to do so, it might result in the students d

12、iffidence toward themselves and might cause them to disgust English.     . The Problems on Teaching Vocabulary in English Class of Junior Middle SchoolAt present, cramming is still popular in the teacher-centered teaching vocabulary. Traditional teachers always spend a lot of cla

13、ss time asking students to read and write new words again and again. The meaning of new words are presented and explained directly in Chinese. As above reasons, more and more problems appear. The paper will mention four problems on Vocabulary Teaching: 1.Teaching words in isolation; 2.Exposing words

14、 incompletely; 3.Neglecting the process of memory; 4.Disconnecting culture background.    3.1 Teaching Words in IsolationMiddle school English teachers in China usually ask students to learn vocabulary lists in which words are isolated from the context. In one case, they let the stude

15、nts pick out all the new words in the text, list them on a paper, and consult the dictionary for the Chinese or English meanings. For example, “display” means “show”, “arrive” means “reach”. In another case, they try to get the students to associate each word with an image or an object. For example,

16、 they hold up a picture of a car and say “This is a car.” Both these teaching techniques imply that learning vocabulary means learning individual word one at a time. These two methods may save time and be fast-effective. However, the relationships between words are as important as the meaning of the

17、 word in isolation: how “car” contrasts with “bus” and “truck”, and how it is related to “driver” and “engine” are as important as the word itself.Neglecting the study of the relationships in English vocabulary system might result in students slowness in comprehension and inappropriateness in exploi

18、ting the English words. Being taught in these ways without a change, students might have difficulty in working out the meanings of some words, such as “time” in the following three sentences:1. She is near her time. (means “She would die soon.”)2. The umpire called time. (means “The umpire called fo

19、r a stop.”)3. He is in the time of his life. (means “The days he is experiencing are very enjoyable.”)Students who make such sentences only know the meaning of each individual word, but they are poor in the proper use of “beneficial” (which should “be beneficial for” people) and “bad” (which should

20、be changed into “poor”). Thus, it is advisable to present new words in an English sentence or a short text, and then conduct the contextual guesswork.     3.2 Exposing Words IncompletelyMany English teachers tend to teach English words in one-to-one correspondence to Chinese words; fo

21、r example, English “glass” is “玻璃” in Chinese, English “cup” is “茶杯” in Chinese, and so on. This traditional translation teaching method which has been adopted in China for a long time is considered to be helpful. But in the long run the overuse of this method is harmful to the development of studen

22、ts language competence. Especially in the elementary stage, this method should be avoided as possible as it can be.Now that the English language is living and productive in particular context, students should acquire vocabulary in context. The teacher had better ask students to try their best to gue

23、ss the meaning from the given context as possible as they can. Furthermore, the same English word in different contexts can have various meanings. Remembering the Chinese meaning in the wordlist does not mean students have already grasped the target word fully. So it is advisable to present new word

24、s in an English sentence or a short text, and then conduct the contextual guesswork. There is an example:Teaching the word “cover” in Unit-6 of the Oxford Junior English Book 8A:While presenting the meanings of the polysemous word “cover”, the teacher had better give students the following sentences

25、 at first:1. The magazine has a picture of a horse on its cover.<n.> the front title page of a book2. Could you open the cover of the bottle for me?<n.> a thing that is used to shelter other things3. He told a lie to cover the mistake.<vt.> conceal; hide4. China covers an area of 9

26、6,000,000 square kilometers.<vt.> take up; occupy5. His research covers a wide field.<vt.> include; involve6. They covered 500 miles one day in their journey.<vt.> travelAfterwards students are requested to guess and infer the accurate meanings of the target word “cover” in differe

27、nt sentence contexts. As for some advanced students in Grade 8 or 9, the teacher may give them enough scope for their own paraphrases of the target word. Such a student-oriented activity activates students thinking at the basis of their known English knowledge. Otherwise the Chinese meanings of the

28、target words given out of context may be a little ambiguous for students to understand. Although this contextual guesswork costs much class time, it is worth training students autonomy to learn English and to deal with new words successfully. Students satisfactory feelings of success may contribute

29、to their interest and confidence in studying English, which will be a benign circulation.    3.3 Neglecting the Process of MemoryMany students find that they could not effectively memorize vocabulary, some even feel frustrated. Why? As all know, memorization is important for vocabular

30、y learning. If words cannot be remembered, few are likely to be produced properly. There are two types of memory processes short-term memory and long-term memory. Short-term memory means that the storation of input only stay in your memory temporarily while the long-term memory means the storation o

31、f input can stay in your memory for more than 10 days, ever for the whole life. In fact, our memory process is a recycling process. According to the survey of linguists, the more times the word is used, the better you remember it. However, many teachers partially emphasize the function of short-term

32、 memory. They seem to care more about the amount of vocabulary input than those actually stay in students memory.Being forced to remember a large amount of vocabulary in this way, students are treated as if they were a funned. In appearance, they take in thousands of new words, but in effect only a

33、few words that are frequently used really can stay in their storation and be exploited. It is not amazing that a senior middle school student who is required to master 3000 words has misused or made mistakes in 60 words when asked to write down a passage of 100 words because of his poor vocabulary s

34、toration. Many of teachers put all the blame to the students laziness. They explain for themselves that those students are too lazy to enlarge their size of vocabulary.There might be some teachers seeing the long-term memory rule. However, they never succeed in applying the memory rule in classroom.

35、 They claim that the time of each period of class is limited that they cant spend so much time on the repetition of vocabulary teaching. As far as I am concerned, I do not think their excuses make any sense. What matter is their ignorance of scientific teaching techniques and irresponsibility for th

36、e development of students?    3.4 Disconnecting Culture BackgroundAnother problem is disconnecting culture background. That means more and more students lean words separable from learning their culture. Because of culture differences, misunderstanding may arise, although the language

37、used in communication may be fault less. The same words or expressions may not mean the same thing to different people. Because of cultural differences, a serious question may cause amusement or laughter; a harmless statement may cause displeasure or anger. Because of cultural differences, jokes by

38、a foreign speaker maybe received with blank faces and stony silence. Yet the same stories in the speakers own country would leave audiences holding their sides with laughter.When students say that they know the meaning of an English word, they usually mean that they have found an equivalent word in

39、Chinese language, but this equivalent word may be misleading. Lets take the word “with” for example. In the sentence of “I have milk for breakfast”, the word “milk” in Chinese culture refers to hot milk, because Chinese people are used to drink hot milk; while the word “milk” in the American culture

40、 refers to cold milk, because Americans never drink boiled milk as we Chinese do. This example shows us that the same word “milk” has different social meanings in different cultures. In fact, many linguists believe that no word can be exactly translated into another language. Learning the vocabulary

41、 of a second language is not just to memorize the equivalent words of language one, but to learn the meaning relationship between “milk” and all other words in English within the context of cultural life.Students can seldom ask such questions as what “run” means because it is difficult to explain th

42、e meaning of a word without knowing the contexts. For example, look at what happens to “run” in different contexts. “Dont run so fast.” “The diesel engine runs perfectly well.” “How your tongue runs.” “The vine runs over the porch.” “He makes a run of guns across the border.” These sentences show th

43、at “run” has many different meanings. In fact, the word “run” appears not to change. Its surroundings that change. This function of context also applies to unfamiliar words. In expressing the idea of inferring meaning from context, Nuttall provides examples defining the word “tock” (a nonsense word)

44、. She poured the water into a tock. Then lifting the tock, she drank. Unfortunately, as she was setting it down again, the tock slipped from her hand and broke. Only the handle remained. In this example, it is very clear that context helps infer and explain the meaning of an unfamiliar word and help

45、 students have a more vivid impression of the word, which is helpful for memorization.     . SolutionsThe problems existed, the teacher must find out scientific techniques of teaching vocabulary. As all know, the classroom teaching is one of the most important ways that the stude

46、nts learn English. As far as the English teaching in the middle schools concerned, teachers need arouse the students interests so that they can learn effectively. This paper will provide five solutions: 1.Object lesson in teaching vocabulary; 2.Pictures in teaching vocabulary; 3.Body language in tea

47、ching vocabulary; 4.Leading-in in teaching vocabulary; 5.Riddles in teaching vocabulary.     4.1 Object Lesson in Teaching VocabularyThe teacher can use some objects teach vocabulary. For example, book, bag, desk, map, pen, pencil-box and so on. In teaching vocabulary, all kinds of te

48、aching aids should be used most of the time to show the meaning of the words, so we need some pictures in class, which has the advantage of avoiding the students learning vocabulary.    4.1.1 The Definition of Object TeachingGenerally speaking, the object teaching is to use some teach

49、ing aids or popular electric equipment to guide the students to get a vivid image of the knowledge, then to richen their feelings of recognition in order to improve the students intelligence. Why do we emphasize the object teaching in the elementary English teaching？First, they can remember15 percen

50、t of the all learning, if they just watch; the amount can add to 25 percent, if combined with the two, it is even up to 65 percent. The object teaching is not only to form an image, but also to stimulate the feelings of watching, hearing. Second, the object teaching is an important stage in learning

51、 language scientifically. It is impossible to form an abstract thinking without concrete thing for the elementary students. If we ignore the object teaching, many elementary students cannot achieve the understanding from concrete to abstract. If they cannot, they just dont get the meaning really. Th

52、erefore, the object teaching should be the main method in elementary education. It is a necessary part to learn English scientifically, effectively and vividly.     4.1.2 How to Present the Object Teaching When preparing for the object teaching aids or models, teachers should consider

53、 something like the conditions of our schools, the hobbies of the student. According to our teaching goals, teachers should try to make our teaching aids various. Generally speaking, there are three object teaching aids.1. Concrete things They conclude object things, samples that are related to the

54、students experience or daily lives. They are very helpful for remembering by deep understanding. In English teaching, if teachers just explain straightly, students will feel boring and cannot remember and understand what the teacher said. The result of the lesson is not satisfactory. Nevertheless, t

55、he teaching method of showing the concrete things is better. It can bring every positive factor into play. Students can deepen their impression or understanding. For example, when teaching noun words, teachers can use object things as an aid.  When teaching adjective words comparative degree, t

56、eachers can use three rulers of different length and three different size of boxes, or three different height of students to make a contrast and practice it. Another example, when teaching this sentence structure “What about?” teachers can prepare three clothes of red, blue, white and put them in fr

57、ont of the classroom. In the class, teachers can call two students to the front and say, “Lets go shopping.” The students say “OK”. Then the teachers come to the clothes and make a question for the first student with an air of asking opinions “Do you like the red one?” The first one answers happily

58、“Yes, I do.” Next, the teacher asks “What about the blue one?” The first student answers unwillingly “No, I dont like it.” At last, the teacher asks, pointing to the white cloth, “What about this one?” The first student answers without thinking “No, I dont.” Then the teacher asks the second student

59、“What about you?” The second one answers at once, “I like the blue one.” Through the showing play, the teacher writes “What about?” on the blackboard and explains in Chinese. All students relate the teachers explanation to the performance and understand the sentence structure very well.2. Model and

60、video  Model and video conclude pictures, models, project on the screen, films and so on. They are powerful in representing respectively.    4.2 Pictures in Teaching VocabularyPictures as one kind of objects in teaching vocabulary can be used in the class. As all know, pictures that show human situations often interest students at the middle school level. The paper will introduce some kinds of pictures. &