论扩展词汇强化阅读能力（全英文）

1、论扩展词汇强化阅读能力（全英文）Developing Vocabulary to Intensify Reading AbilityAbstractThe present paper points out problems existing in the learning of vocabulary. It also explores these problems effect on reading ability. Findings from 30 senior English major students through a questionnaire show that their me

2、thods and habits of learning vocabulary will affect the real acquisition of vocabulary and finally affect reading ability.Key Words: vocabulary, reading ability, real acquisition of vocabulary1. IntroductionIn recent years, there are many researchers and theorists who have repeatedly verified that t

3、here is a mutual relationship between reading comprehension and the acquisition of vocabulary. These researches emphasize that reading will be helpful for ones who can acquire a large number of new words. They also believe that vocabulary affect reading comprehension, but how? There are few research

4、es on this topic.It is true that people often use sentences to express their intended meaning. The minimal part of a sentence is word. But how do these words form a sentence? Despite grammatical rules, it should also consist of word collocations. Word collocations are stable. Please look at followin

5、g examples:If you are free now, I suggest _(play) basketball for a while.In this sentence, if you know its collocation, you will easily find out the answer. But if you do not know, I do not think you can cope with it well.Similarly, the word high, tall are similar in meaning but are often used with

6、different collocations as in high quality7 z zhigh standard7 , za tall man but never high man.The word collocation has been established. All learners can do is to learn it and try to use it As Nation(2001:318) notes that ”all fluent and appropriate language use requires collocation knowledge” . But

7、according to observation, many learners pay little attention to them. So they often make mistakes when they try to use it in their daily life.3.4.4 Attaching No Importance to IdiomsIdioms are an important part of English. As soon as you use English, no matter reading comprehension, translation, list

8、ening comprehension, speaking, writing, there is no doubt that you will meet idioms. As Jennifer Seidl, a linguist of England said in preface of his work, English Idioms and How to Use them (1978): it is impossible to make idioms and language apart You have no say on whether use it or not. It can be

9、 seen that idioms are of great importance. But what is an idiom?As to definition of idiom, different people hold different view towards this term and focus on different angle. So until nowz they have not reached an agreement.Due to the lack of agreement, maybe it can be defined according to dictiona

10、ry. There are two definitions in Macmillan English dictionary For Advanced learners:l) an expression whose meaning is different from the meaning from the meaning of the individual word. 2) a particular style in language, art, or music. The first one will be mainly discussed in this paper.Besides, th

11、ere are two main features of idioms: semantic unity7 and structural stability . The meaning of an idiom can not be inferred from single word. The words formed the idiom are stable and refuse to make any change.Now that its importance, its definition and its main features have been shown, it is essen

12、tial to find out why English learners neglect idioms.The first and the most important reason is the English learners seldom consider memorizing idioms when one learns English, what he concerns is single word, andmaybe few collocations. So they cannot use it or understand it What he thinks is that a

13、sentence is formed by some single words, so concentrating on single word is enough. They neglect relationship among words.In addition, there are many kinds of idioms, such as Idioms verbal in nature, Idioms nominal in nature7, Idioms adjectival in nature , Idioms adverbial in nature and proverbs . S

14、o English owns a great many idioms. The amount of it is so large that may frighten some learners, who think that there are so many idioms that I can not study all of them. It is better to give them up completely.How these Problems Affecting One s Reading AbilityAll of the problems stated above shoul

15、d be responsible for poor reading ability. Firstly, it is very easy to forget its meaning when one memorizes only single word. It is often heard some learners complain that they forget all the words they memorized yesterday. One reason for this is lack of enough repetition. Another reason is short o

16、f resources to date back to your memory. For example, if you memorize pineapple anddelicious pineapple7 at the same time, it is less possible to forget delicious pineapple. When one forgets its meaning or even its form in reading comprehension, it is impossible to understand the sentence completely.

17、Secondly, a word may be applied to different contexts and situations. So learn a word only in a certain situation or some certain situations is not enough. Take the word cell as an example:Cell is the smallest part of a living creature.The thief was kept in a cell.Why not buy a cell? It is very conv

18、enient for you to contact others.It is assumed that you know one of its meaning,细胞in Chinese. You can understand the first sentence, but how about the second one and the third one?In the end, the importance of collocations and idioms should be emphasized. They can be seen everywhere in English learn

19、ing process. Without such knowledge, one can not understand it correctly for people can not find out its meaning by gathering all the single word s meaning. Failing to learn them well, it is difficult or even impossible to learn English welLSuggestions of Developing Reading AbilityEnlarging Vocabula

20、ryVocabulary can be enlarged in many different ways and different learners may prefer to enlarge vocabulary in different ways. The following suggestions may be helpful for a learner:Consolidate previous vocabulary. There are short-time memory and long-time memory. At first, people gain short-time me

21、mory, and then people will gain long-time memory through regular review and consolidations. There are many methods that will reach this goal. For instance, making sentence, synonyms and antonyms will be useful.Learning word formation rules and common affixes to guess new word s meaning will be helpf

22、ul when you encounter an unknown word in reading process. A word contains at least one free morpheme, which will be root when connected with other bound morpheme as a new word. If you have learned the root, it will be with no difficulty for you to guess its meaning. Similarly, if you meet a compound

23、 word and know all parts, it is easy to know its meaning. For example, if you do not know bookseller, but you know what book and seller mean. And then you can explain it in this way: a person who sells books. In addition, knowledge of common affixes is helpful. For instance, if you have learned the

24、word like and possible , and you have known that dis and im mean not , you will quickly get the meaning of dislike and Impossible.Being Aware of Accumulation of IdiomsAs stated above, idioms are vital for English learning. And it is very difficult. So when one learns English, it is wise to accumulat

25、e idioms. In reading comprehension, if you know it, you understand it. But if you do not know it, you fail to get its meaning even if you know all the words in itMoving from Easy to DifficultWhen one first learns to read, one should read simple materials.As his vocabulary and knowledge growing, it i

26、s proper for him to read difficult one, then more difficult. After obeying this rule, one can make progress and have interest. For a beginning learner, it will make him lose interest if he was given reading material for advanced learner. So the difficulty of reading material should fit your lever.Ma

27、king Reading Purpose ClearDifferent people have different purposes for reading. So you should adjust methods to different purposes. If you are reading for general idea, you can skim the material. If you are reading for doing exercise, you should first graph main idea and then focus on the text refer

28、s to exercise. It is efficient to apply different methods to different purposes.Making Use of Your Previous KnowledgeYour previous knowledge will be helpful for you when you read some unfamiliar material. It is a top-town model. It is true that learn the background knowledge first so that learners e

29、quipped with such knowledge will be able to guess meaning from the printed page. Therefore, be aware of background information.Being Independent While ReadingEnglish learners who meet a word they cannot interpret are likely first to ask what it means. Then learners turn to a dictionary. In fact, thi

30、s way is not proper. It does not mean that learners are not allowed to use dictionary. On the contrary, it is advisable. What we emphasized is that do not use dictionary while you are reading, which will slow down your reading speed.ConclusionThis present paper emphasizes that not only width of voca

31、bulary, but depth of vocabulary as well will affect reading ability. It is helpful for learners to change their minds of learning vocabulary.According to the questionnaire, it points out the general problems of learning vocabulary. It will do learners some bad while studying.In addition, this paper

32、gives some suggestions of developing reading ability. It may give learners some hints when they learn to read. However, it should be pointed out that the research was done under certain situation. Different level, different background, different studying environment and different training will resul

33、t in different problems and solutions. Future research should do further research on different learners at different levels.In addition, the author found a very strange“ phenomenon: now many senior English major students are preparing for TEM8. During the process, they often find a situation that th

34、ey know, or they think they know, all the words in a sentence, but they cannot understand it. Why does this happen?Due to the two reasons above, the author decided to do some researches to find out the causes.With the help of a questionnaire and observation, it was found that some learners have acqu

35、ired, or they think they have acquired, a great many of vocabulary, but their reading ability were also very poor. According to the author7 s study, this is due to their habits and methods of gaining new words. For a new word, the most common way they use is to look it up in a dictionary and then me

36、morize it This is what they think ”the acquisition of a word. In fact, it (the new word) can not be really acquired. Moreover, although it is true that dictionary meaning is important for vocabulary acquisition, dictionary meaning does not cover all the meanings that a word may have in different sit

37、uations or contexts. So in this way, learners can only study part of its meaning. This does not guarantee reading ability in a foreign language.All in all, when one learns a new word, one should focus on not only part of its meanings, but also try to learn as much as possible and pay attention to wo

38、rd collocations and idioms.The Real Acquisition of A WordIn most cases, English learners, first of all, learn vocabulary, which is likely to last for a long time even after one had learned all the basic grammatical rules. Without large amount of vocabulary, one can not express him well, let alone ot

39、her relevant skills, such as reading comprehension, listening comprehension, writing and so on. Vocabulary to English learning is just something like gasoline to a car. Without enough gasoline (here refers to vocabulary), it is obvious that a car will never reach its destination (here refers to Engl

40、ish learning). As the importance of English vocabulary has show to everybody, one should make every effort to learn vocabulary effectively. But how to learn? In order to solve this problem, it is essential for one to answer the question that when you learn a new word, what aspects do you have to pla

41、ce great importance on?A simple answer may be its pronunciation, its form and its meaning because a word is a unity of the three elements above. However, knowing these three parts is not enough for that we do not know how to and when to use it properly and we may encounter it in a context but we can

42、 not understand it. It would be more difficult for learners to understand idioms even though all the words in it may be already known. According to Hedge (2000), vocabulary learning involves at least two aspects of meaning. The first aspect involves the understanding of its denotative and connotativ

43、e meaning. The second aspect involves understanding the sense relations among words.So the real acquisition of vocabulary should include gaining those parts listed above.MethodA QuestionnaireWhich way would you choose when you memorize new words?Memorize from vocabulary books bought from bookshopMem

44、orize vocabulary listed in the textbookMemorize vocabulary while readingIf the meaning of a new word is listed, will you add some other meanings from dictionary?Yes, add all the meaningsYes, add 2-3 meaningsNeverWill you read its English explanation while looking up a new word in dictionary?Yes, rea

45、d all of themYes, but only read relevant onesNeverWhen a word has a great deal of meanings, how many will you memorize?Memorize all of themMemorize 2-3 meanings listed at the beginningWhen you memorize new words, will you memorize its collocations?Memorize all of themMemorize some of them you are in

46、terested inNoneSubjectThe subjects were 30 senior English major students from Yunnan Agricultural University. They were selected randomly to complete this questionnaire. They have learned English for at least ten years. Their family background and their results of study were different.ResultsThe fol

47、lowing table shows the methods and habits of these 30 English major students in vocabulary learning.1 2 34 5A 10(33.3%) 4(13.3%) 5(16.7%) 2(6.7%) 3(10%)B 7(23.3%) 13(43.3%) 24(80%) 28(93.3%) 26(86.7%)C 13(433%) 13(43.3%) 1(3.3%) 1(33%) 3.4 DiscussionsFrom the results above, some problems in their vo

48、cabulary learning are discovered. They will be discussed one by one in the following paragraphs.Memorizing Isolated WordFrom the questionnaire, Chinese learners of English are likely to memorize isolated word. The most common ways most students use to memorize new words are 1) to buy a vocabulary bo

49、ok from a bookshop 2) to memorize vocabulary listed in the textbook 3) to memorize vocabulary while reading. The first one, memorizing from vocabulary books from bookshop, has proven to be both ineffective and time-consuming. Vocabulary is often listed alphabetically in these books. And due to lack

50、of space, they have few meanings and less or even no collocations. A few diligent students may look it up in a dictionary and add much more meanings to a word and then memorize it while other students may not.In this way, those who look up dictionary will know more meanings, but as stated above, dic

51、tionary meaning does not cover all the meanings that a word may have in differentsituations or contexts. Of course, the rest will acquire lessmeaning. All of them will affect your reading comprehension.The second one and the third one, which seem to learn vocabulary in contexts, in fact are both to

52、learn isolated words. It is true that the word is settled in a context, but, according to the author s observation, learners will write it down in hisher own notebook, then look it up in a dictionary and at last memorize it. During this process, the context is neglected.So in fact, these three methods are the same in essence