论文总字数：34879字

摘 要

词汇是语言的三要素之一，词汇量的大小直接影响到听说读写四项语言技能的发展。词汇的积累在英语学习中至关重要。但现阶段，许多初中学生在学习词汇时遇到各种各样的困难，导致他们词汇学习效率低下。本文讨论了初中学生词汇学习的现状，分析了学生在词汇学习上遇到的典型问题。本文强调了学生在词汇学习方面的兴趣与积极性以及词汇的基本知识与规律的重要作用，提出了一些提高初中学生词汇学习效率的有效建议，着重介绍了语境法和词块法这两种实践性较强的词汇学习方法。

关键词：词汇学习；初中；问题；建议

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Analysis of Existing Problems in Vocabulary Teaching and Learning 3

3.1 The current situation of vocabulary teaching and learning in junior middle school 3

3.2 Analysis of existing problems in vocabulary teaching in junior middle school 4

3.3 Analysis of existing problems in vocabulary learning in junior middle school 5

4. Suggestions for Improving Efficiency of Vocabulary Learning 6

4.1 Arousing students’ motivation and interest 7

4.2 Learning words with basic vocabulary knowledge and principles 8

4.3 Context-based approach 9

4.4 Lexical approach 11

4.5 Other suggestions 12

5. Conclusion 13

Works Cited 14

1. Introduction

Vocabulary learning plays a critical role in English study. The majority of Chinese students begin their systematic English study in the stage of junior middle school. Thus, vocabulary learning is of great significance in junior middle school.

According to the National English Curriculum issued by the Ministry of Education in 2011, in the stage of basic education, the general objective of English curriculum is to cultivate the learners" comprehensive language application ability, which is derived from students’ language skills，language knowledge，affect and attitude，learning strategy, and cultural awareness. The first two are the foundation of the comprehensive linguistic application, while vocabulary is an important component of language knowledge, so vocabulary learning is very important in the development of comprehensive language application ability. A student’s vocabulary directly influences his comprehensive skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In a word, the improvement of the four skills is closely related to the increasing of a student’s vocabulary. The National English Curriculum also points out that the requirement for students on vocabulary becomes higher and stricter in the aspects of both quality and quantity. On the one hand, junior middle school students are required to grasp 1500 to 1600 words and 200 to 300 phrases; on the other hand, they need to learn how to use words and phrases correctly. Therefore, the task of vocabulary learning and teaching becomes more difficult for both students and teachers.

According to her teaching practice in a junior middle school, the writer found some problems in vocabulary teaching and learning. It seems that the student and the English teacher hold different attitudes toward vocabulary learning. Most students find it difficult to learn vocabulary efficiently, and do not have effective ways to master vocabulary，much less to put them into use. However, teachers tend to feel that vocabulary is easy to grasp and needn’t take much amount of effort, but it is grammar that should be placed emphasis on. The teacher’s ignorance of the importance of vocabulary gives rise to the improper vocabulary teaching methods and the student’s discouraging attitudes as well as low efficient learning strategies. As a result, the low efficiency of vocabulary learning exerts great negative influence on students’ attitudes toward English and their effect of English study.

From the perspectives of both teachers and students, this thesis mainly analyzes the problems that occur in vocabulary teaching and learning, and discusses them in terms of theory and practice based on the new teaching program. To solve these problems, some practical suggestions are proposed. The purpose of this thesis is to explore more effective ways for junior middle school students to learn vocabulary well and learn English easily.

2. Literature Review

Vocabulary offers the meaning of language. Many linguists have studied the usage of vocabulary. For example, the famous English linguistic Jeremy Hammer once said, “If the language structures make up the skeleton of language, then it is vocabulary that provides the vital organs and flesh.” (Harmer, 1991: 153) Hammer expresses his opinion toward the relationship between vocabulary and language structures. Apart from this perspective, many scholars study the function of vocabulary in a language from the angle of relationship between vocabulary and grammar. It is widely acknowledged that vocabulary, sound and grammar are the three elements of language; meanwhile vocabulary is the carrier of sound and grammar. About the function of each element, Michael McCarthy proposed that “No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wide range of meanings, communication in L2 cannot happen in any meaningful way.” (McCarthy, 1990: 12) In his view, vocabulary is prior to sound and grammar. Another scholar D. A. Wilkins also put that “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” (Wilkins, 1972: 111)

Linguists have gradually changed their attitudes towards the relationship between vocabulary and grammar, which deeply influences the teaching of vocabulary. With the development of language teaching, there are a lot different kinds of language teaching methods and approaches, such as Grammar Translation Method, Direct Method, Audio-lingual Method, Communicative Approach, and so on. They all have their own features in English vocabulary learning and teaching. Traditional English teaching methods usually focus on grammar teaching. In recent years, with the reform of English curriculum, people are increasingly aware of the importance of vocabulary grasping. Many linguists, English scholars and teachers both at home and abroad have devoted themselves to the study of vocabulary teaching methods. James Coady held the view that “the most effective way of vocabulary acquisition is through extensive reading.” (Coady, 1997: 227) There are many linguists such as Jan Hulstijn who propose that the key of vocabulary teaching should be the instructions of vocabulary acquisition strategies. They put forward many famous vocabulary learning strategies, for example, metacognitive strategy, which includes the content of planning, selective attention, self-monitoring, and self-evaluation. Nowadays, the current trends in teaching second language vocabulary involve six items in turn: “first, build a large sight vocabulary; second, integrate new words with the old; third, provide a number of encounters with a word; four, promote a deep level of processing; five, facilitate imagining and concreteness; six, use a variety of techniques.” (Sokmen, 1997: 155) This thesis analyzes the problems in vocabulary learning and teaching, and comes up with effective solutions to these problems from the practical standpoint and the perspective of context theory and lexical theory.

3. Analysis of Existing Problems in Vocabulary Teaching and Learning

During her teaching practice as an English teacher of Grade 8, the writer paid special attention to the current situation of vocabulary teaching and learning in junior middle school. Through observation, the major problems which bring about the low efficiency of vocabulary learning are discovered. In this part, the writer will mainly analyze these problems.

3.1 The current situation of vocabulary teaching and learning in junior middle school

Nowadays, in English class in junior middle school, the teacher has too much to teach. To make students get decent grades, they are inclined to take vocabulary for granted, ignore the effective teaching of vocabulary and pay more attention to the teaching of grammar and sentence patterns. There are two extreme forms of vocabulary teaching. In the first case, English teachers give the oral translation or write down the part of speech and the equivalent Chinese meaning of the words directly, then read the word-list and ask all the students to do the mechanical imitation of the pronunciation and spelling. There isn’t enough related context supplied to emphasize the connotation and the usage of the words. In the other situation, the English teacher writes down the details of a word’s different usage and example sentences introduced by the dictionary or reference books, and the students are required to copy all these usages and sentences. With respect to the check of vocabulary, teachers put too much emphasis on the effect of words dictation but neglect the application. The simple remedy for the students who fail in the words dictation is to copy them, maybe as much as ten times or more. In such teaching modes, the students are used to reciting words with the unconscious mechanical copying which has less efficiency. When the students do the dictation again, many of them still have problems with some words.

Vocabulary taught with the two extreme teaching modes are lack of language context. These situations lead to the result that although students have recited many words, they do not know how to use them properly. The words are taught in isolation, and it makes students feel vocabulary learning boring and uninteresting. They find it hard for them to remember a series of letters. These typical ways to teach vocabulary in junior middle school make students get half the results with twice the effort and many problems are aroused during the teaching process. With the increasing of the vocabulary, not only will the enthusiasm of students in learning English vocabulary be inevitably harmed, but their confidence in English study will also gradually disappear.

3.2 Analysis of existing problems in vocabulary teaching in junior middle school

The first problem is about the English teacher’s view on vocabulary teaching. As is mentioned in the former part, English teachers concentrate more on the teaching of grammar and sentence patterns. Some teachers believe that in the process of grammar drills and reading comprehension, students are also acquiring vocabulary indirectly. That is to say, the foreign language vocabulary acquisition is regarded as an automatic subconscious behavior. Words need not be taught separately with specialized attention. Some other teachers argue that the acquisition of vocabulary mainly depends on students’ own diligence and efforts. There is no need for teachers to expend energy on vocabulary teaching; it is the teaching of grammar, pragmatics, discourse, the communicative competence, and the communicative strategy that they should focus on. As one of the three elements that constitute language, vocabulary teaching has not got enough attention it deserves from the English teacher. Being lack of the exercises process, some teachers think that the master of vocabulary just means knowing the word’s pronunciation, understanding its spelling, and grasping its corresponding Chinese meaning.

The second vocabulary teaching problem is the dated teaching method. What teaching methods to adopt is the key factor affecting foreign language vocabulary teaching. In the current English class in junior middle school, many English teachers still hold the traditional teaching thoughts, and stick to the cramming education method. In such teaching mode, the teaching process is organized in the way that the teacher is the center of the class and is in charge of imparting knowledge while students listen. The whole teaching process involves three procedures: first is the lead-in of new words, usually takes place before English class--maybe during the morning reading period, the teacher guides students to read the wordlist for several times. Then, the teacher begins to teach the usage and sentence pattern of words, by translation between English and Chinese and making sentence. The last step is the homework assignment and check—copy the words and have a dictation. The traditional vocabulary teaching methods have limited forms of lead-in, explaining, checking, and teaching activities, relying on repetition and rote learning. Such method is inefficient and is inclined to make students have emotional weariness and fear in English study.

3.3 Analysis of existing problems in vocabulary learning in junior middle school

Some of the problems of vocabulary learning derive from the vocabulary teaching problems as is analyzed above, for example, students’ weariness and fear in English study, which make them lose the interest in learning English. Students’ lack of interest in learning English is also the result of lacking vocabulary learning strategies. They learn words in isolation. The most common method of vocabulary learning applied by the junior middle students is to remember the wordlist automatically by repetition; they recite each word letter by letter just as if they are reciting different telephone number, including the part of speech and Chinese meaning. Students complain that they can recite lots of new words in a short time, but they will also forget these words soon. This is another problem: most of the students do not have the regular revision on vocabulary.

Another serious fact is that junior middle school students are lack of the basic vocabulary knowledge. They lack the knowledge of precise pronunciation of each morpheme, each letter and monogram, and the knowledge of word formation, which can help them memorize words correctly and easily. Many students cannot recognize the relationship among sound, form and meaning. They cannot find the connection between the monogram and pronunciation, meaning and affix. For instance, they often mix up words like though, through, and thought, either because they cannot read it correctly or they cannot spell words through pronunciation. With no awareness of remembering words in the help of phonetic symbols and rules of pronunciation, words mean random combination of letters to most junior middle students. To recite so many new words means to remember so many arbitrary letter combinations. It is hard and boring. It brings about the common phenomena that by listening, the student understands the word but don’t remember how to spell it; or he can write down a word but don’t know how to read it; or he can read and spell a word but don’t understand its meaning.

All these problems make junior middle school students feel bored and difficult to master vocabulary. As a result, they bring about the low efficiency in vocabulary learning. Many English teachers admit that some students in junior middle school are likely to lose interest and confidence in English because of the problem of vocabulary.

4. Suggestions for Improving Efficiency of Vocabulary Learning

The problems in vocabulary teaching and learning discussed in part 3 are the typical ones in the English class in Chinese junior middle school. The low efficiency in vocabulary learning sets up obstacles in students’ English study. To get a decent grade in English paper and to develop the comprehensive English language competence, solutions to these problems must be figured out.

4.1 Arousing students’ motivation and interest

The first step to improve the efficiency of vocabulary learning is to arouse students’ motivation and activate their interest. As the important nonintellectual factors, motivation and interest has great influence on vocabulary learning, so English teachers should take actions to motivate students. Teachers should manage to change their vocabulary teaching attitudes and methods to make the students realize that vocabulary is easy and interesting to memorize. To achieve this goal, one useful way is adjusting the classroom atmosphere. It means that English teachers can apply some new methods by designing some interesting activities and teach words in humorous ways. In the teaching of English, the appropriate use of humor by teachers can stimulate students" emotions, bringing them joy and happiness, and it is certain to bring about students" interest and motivation to learn vocabulary. The humorous way of teaching deepen students’ understanding and their memory of vocabulary, and eventually improve their vocabulary learning efficiency. For instance, during the writer’s stay in a junior middle school, once an experienced English teacher taught the word “bride” and she also tried to introduce its equivalent “bridegroom”. So she asked “At the wedding, who is the man of the couple? And who is the woman?” then she answered herself “Of course the man with room is the bridegroom!” “But the bride may not be happy, why?” “Because her bridegroom is not the best man; the ‘best man’ is standing behind the bridegroom.” With such humorous explanation, students with their own experience and common sense of life felt funny and grasped the three words easily.

The key step to arouse students’ interest lies in the step of word presentation. In the course of word presentation, it is important to construct a special situation where new words can be naturally led in. Compared with introducing a list of unrelated words directly, a special situation will leave students deep impression. To achieve this effect, a basic principle should not be ignored is that the situation should be fun and closely related to the realistic life.

Apart from presentation, teachers should also find effective ways to practice vocabulary. For example, English teachers can arrange various activities and select interesting materials according to students’ age, such as riddle guessing, role-playing. To activate students’ motivation, English teachers can also play one or two interesting English films with Chinese and English subtitle as the prize of improvement in English study. When enjoying the movie, students have the assignment of picking up several useful words and usage.

4.2 Learning words with basic vocabulary knowledge and principles

As is mentioned in part 3, junior middle school students lack basic vocabulary knowledge and principles. For example, they have problems in pronouncing words accurately, another example, they can’t recognize the connection between a word’s spelling and its pronunciation. So English teachers should teach students the accurate pronunciation of each syllable and the rules between letters and sounds, and guide students to discover and summarize the word pronunciation and spelling rules. Then students will be able to memorize words by means of the pronunciation principles instead of rote learning.

Students should be encouraged to discover the regular correspondence between the monogram and pronunciation. For example, in junior middle stage, the letter combination “ea” in words is usually pronounced as [i:], such as “teacher”, “dream”, “please”, and “read”. Having developed the ability of pronouncing words through pronunciation rules, students will be able to recite words easily and pronounce unfamiliar words which will arouse their enthusiasm and confidence in English. However, in some special words, “ea” is pronounced as [e], such as “peasant”. Such irregular correspondence should be emphasized by the English teacher in junior middle school. If not, two mistakes are likely to appear. The first one is that some students tend to pronounce “peasant” as ["pi:z(ə)nt]. The second one is that some students who pronounce “peasant” in a correct way but spell it as PESANT or PASANT. This is because they are unaware of the special correspondence between the letter combination “ea” and its pronunciation [e].

One of the fastest, easiest and most useful ways to learn and master vocabulary is to analyze the composition of the word. So it is necessary to learn some knowledge about word formation. However, at the elementary phase of English learning, there is no necessity for English teacher to explain the principles of word-building detailedly, for it will confuse students and make vocabulary learning boring again. What’s more, the words need to be learned in junior middle school are relatively easy, so students only need to have a basic knowledge of derivation, that is, they just need to know the meaning of prefixes and suffixes that frequent in textbooks. This simple principle can be applied in many conditions. When a teacher teaches a new word, he can write a familiar word that has the same root with the new one. For example, when a teacher teaches the word “careless”, he can connect it with the word “careful” which has already been learned, then students can grasp the word “careless” at once. When a teacher analyzes a difficult reading comprehension in which a new word appears, he can guide students to guess the meaning of the new word by observing its prefix or suffix. For example, to let the student guess the meaning of the new word “impatient”, he can write down the words “polite” and “impolite” on the blackboard, then students will think of the word “patient” and know that “impatient” has the negative meaning of “patient”.

4.3 Context-based approach

In Part 4.1 the writer mentioned the presentation of new words by creating a fun and real situation. This also means setting context. As a matter of fact, the word itself is an abstract symbol; only when in a certain context, will it obtain certain specific meaning. The concept of context was first put forward by Malinowski. It means the words that come just before and after a word, phrase or statement and help readers understand its meaning. “The context is divided into three parts: linguistic context, also called co-text, which refers to the discourse structure and its logic coherence; situational context, which refers to the specific scene, the discourse, the event, and the participants; and cultural context, which refers to the cultural and social background that is involved.” (Hu Zhuanglin, 2001:159) Context is often regarded as co-text by the teachers in English teaching. It is of great necessity and importance in English vocabulary teaching.

Context teaching means establishing a vivid situation which supplies a reasonable background to use the target words typically and naturally. “Only being in a context will a word be alive.” (Lv Shuxiang, 1979:196) The meaning of vocabulary is not decided by the dictionary, but its co-text. It is difficult to learn a word’s connotation and usage when students learn vocabulary in isolation; but learning in context, students can master the exact meaning and flexible usage. Vocabulary is easier to be learned in context than in the isolated wordlist in that such meaningful context permits a more complex and deeper cognitive processing, which enhances the storage of memory. A word may have different meaning, and the specific meaning is determined by the context in which it is used; different words may have the same meaning, and which one to choose is also determined by the context. For instance, the word “fall” has different meaning in the two sentences: 1. He often falls off his bike. 2. Leaves turn yellow in fall. In sentence 1, “fall” means that someone or something moves quickly downward onto or toward the ground by accident or because of a natural force, while the word “fall” in sentence 2 is a season and is equal to the word “autumn”. The specific context endows words with the temporary meaning. Let’s take the following sentence for an example: The wish is father to the thought. The word “father” is defined as a male parent in the dictionary. But in this sentence, according to the co-text we find that the word “father” has a temporary meaning of “source” or “origin”. The sentence means that “the wish is the origin of the thought”.

English teachers should teach students to determine words’ meaning through context and learn their various usages in different contexts. After experiencing meanings of a word in different contexts, students can get a comprehensive understanding of this word. Students can also cultivate a sense of language in it. With the help of context, students can be taught to guess the connotative meaning of synonyms, grasp the pragmatic meaning of words, eliminate ambiguity in comprehension and infer word meaning with context clues. In the junior middle school where the writer worked for three months, an excellent English teacher applied context-based approach to teach vocabulary by creating a mock context which we often encounter in daily life, he asked students to make sentences that are appropriate under such condition with target words. In this way, the students can not only master the word’s meaning and detailed use, they also apply the new words into the realistic communication. At the same time, the student’s creativity is also developed.

4.4 Lexical approach

From the writer’s part, learning vocabulary by lexical chunks is a very effective way to pick up words’ usage and meaning. Many linguists have found that in natural languages like English, there are a large amount of fixed or semi-fixed language structures which are of both grammatical and lexical features. These language patterns usually have the constant form and meaning and are used in high frequency in some fixed contexts. Such language patterns are called chunks. Michael Lewis puts it that “Language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar.”(Lewis, 1993: 34) He believes that lexical phrases are the ideal unit for language teaching and learning. “Lexical chunks are divided into four categories: poly-words, like ‘a piece of cake’, which is regarded as a unit just like a word; institutionalized expressions, like ‘how do you do’; phrasal constraints, like ‘a day/week…ago’; and sentence builders, like ‘I can …’ ” (Nattinger and Dccarrico, 1992: 66) These patterned structures are stored in human brains to be extracted and used any time. With the fixed syntactic structure, stable collocation meaning, and specific pragmatic environment, lexical chunk theory provides a fresh perspective for vocabulary learning.

The theory of Lexical Approach is one of the vocabulary teaching theories. It was put forward by Lewis in 1993 in his book “The Lexical Approach: the state of ELT and a new way forward”. In this concept, lexis refers to “lexical chunks” which is the core of Lexical Approach. Most of the junior middle students learn vocabulary word by word, but lexical approach advocates the learning of the semi-finished products of language directly, for these chunks give the collocation, usage and context of the target word, and offer students the opportunity to understand the word’s pragmatic function. Here is an example: English teachers can teach the usage of the word “play” through the phrases “play the guitar” and “play basketball”. Given some more examples of instruments and ball games, students will naturally conclude the meanings and usages of “play”: play the instrument; play ball games. Learning vocabulary with lexical approach is more effective than learning words in isolation in that the former learning method enable students to have a deeper impression on the new word’s meaning and usage at the same time. English teachers should have the awareness of lexical chunks and cultivate students’ sensitivity of chunks. This means that English teachers should guide students to recognize, summarize and accumulate chunks appearing frequently. Students should form the habit of taking lexical chunks as the basic unit of vocabulary learning. Accustomed to memorizing and understanding words in chunks, the more lexical chunks a student accumulates, the deeper memories he will have. The accumulation of lexical chunks will help junior middle students form a large inter-related word net. Then students are able to use the words skillfully and learn English independently. With lexical chunks, junior middle students’ vocabulary is widened quickly.

4.5 Other suggestions

The low efficiency of vocabulary learning also results from the fact that junior middle students learn words fast and forget them fast. In addition to the inefficient learning methods, another reason is that they don’t have a timely revision. The famous Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve pictured by German psychologist Ebbinghaus demonstrates the rule of forgetting. The Curve tells people that in the initial stage, the speed of forgetting is very fast, then it gradually slows down, and finally nothing is to be forgotten. Students need to follow the memory rules by arranging reasonable and timely revision on words learned. English teachers can help students make scientific revision plan for words learned the previous day, the previous week, and even the previous month. The regular and flexible check on vocabulary by teachers is very necessary and helpful.

Another suggestion for junior middle school students is to widen their source of English study. At present, they rely too much on the textbook, the teacher and the English class in the study of English. To improve their vocabulary learning efficiency, they must become active learners with more sources of study, treating the teacher and textbook as the basic source, and increase their extracurricular reading. With the development of modern science and technology, they can take great advantage of the modern multimedia. They can learn useful words from films, TV dramas, radios, and educational programs specialized for English learners. The electronic dictionary is a convenient technology product to learn new words, but there is a fact that must be pointed out: Through observation, the writer found that very few students can really benefit from the electronic dictionary. Students with the electronic dictionary are likely to abuse it. They are not willing to memorize the new words they meet in mind because they can look up them in the e-dictionary anytime. Traditional bilingual dictionary with authentic examples is a good source of vocabulary learning that should be made full use of.

5. Conclusion

In the foundation stage of English study, the accumulation of vocabulary is of vital significance for junior middle school students. With the analysis of the current vocabulary teaching and learning, it is easy to conclude that teachers and students are both responsible for the low efficiency of vocabulary learning. The teachers’ inappropriate attitudes towards vocabulary in addition to some dated and low efficient teaching methods make students lose interest and confidence in vocabulary learning and even in English study. Students’ lack of basic vocabulary knowledge and scientific vocabulary learning methods make them feel difficult to master words.

Aiming at the current vocabulary problems, English teachers should hold right attitudes towards vocabulary teaching which will encourage them to develop interesting and effective teaching methods. Scientific teaching methods help improve students’ interest in learning vocabulary. As for the students, the first task is to strengthen their mastery of the basic vocabulary knowledge and principles. They need to take the initiative to learn vocabulary, and learn with joy. In order to reach this goal, they must apply the proper vocabulary learning methods. Context-based approach and lexical approach can remedy the shortage of traditional way of vocabulary learning. Rather than learn words in isolation, the two approaches enable students to master the meaning and the usage of words naturally and easily. To sum up, English teachers and students should make joint effort to improve the efficiency of vocabulary learning and make progress in English study. With the guidance of teachers, students should find their own vocabulary learning strategies, foster the capability of self-study, and expand learning resources. By doing this, vocabulary learning will be very interesting and students can master English easily and efficiently.

Works Cited

[1] Coady, J. Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997

[2]Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. London: Longman, 1991

[3] Lewis, M. The Lexical Approach. Hove: Language Teaching Publication, 1993.

[4]Michael, McCarthy. Vocabulary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990

[5]Nattinger, J. amp; J. De Carrico. Lexical Phrase and Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992

[6]Sokmen, A. J. Current Trends in Teaching Second Language Vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997

[7]Linguistics in Language Teaching. Cambridge: MA: MIT Press, 1972

[8]胡壮麟. 《语境研究的多元化》. 北京：外语教学与研究出版社，2001.

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[10]《义务教育英语课程标准2011年版》. 北京：北京师范大学出版社，2012

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