How to do Vocabulary Teaching in Middle School英语专业毕业论文.doc

How to do Vocabulary Teaching in Middle SchoolAbstract: Word is one of the three basic language units. It is essential to communication. Without vocabulary we can convey nothing, therefore, vocabulary teaching is an indispensable part of English curriculum. But some traditional vocabulary-teaching methods seem to isolate the words from the context or break away from the scientific rules. They cant help students to develop a language competence in the long run but cause them to lose interest in English. Middle school English teachers should pay attention it, since they are the premier ones who introduce students to the field of English .In this paper, I would provide six scientific vocabulary-teaching techniques. I think they could be valuable for middle school English teachers during their teaching process.Key words: technique, vocabulary, context, competence 摘 要：单词是语言最基本的因素之一。它在人们的交流中起着很大的作用。如果没有词汇我们则完全无法表达任何东西。因此，词汇教学是英语教学中不可缺少的一部分。一些中学英语教师在讲授词汇时，把词汇从上下文中脱离出来，忽略了科学的学习规律；从长远来看，这种传统的词汇教学方法不仅不利于学生形成和提高英语语言能力，反而会导致他们对英语失去兴趣。作为中学生学习英语的启蒙老师，中学英语教师在教学中需注意这些。在我的论文中，我提供了6种比较科学的词汇教学方法。我希望这几种方法对中学英语教师会有一定的参考价值。关键词:教学方法；词汇；语境；语言能力ContentsAbstractiContentsiiiIntroduction11 The importance of vocabulary teaching in middle school21.1 The importance of word21.2 The importance of vocabulary teaching in English curriculum22. The vocabulary teaching methods of middle school32.1 Three distinguishing features of English vocabulary32.2 The drawbacks of several traditional vocabulary teaching methods52.3 Six scientific methods of teaching vocabulary102.4 The useful of scientific methods in vocabulary teaching 153. The importance of keeping student interested and encouraged in learning vocabulary163.1 The importance of keeping student interested in learning vocabulary173.2 The importance of encourage student to learning vocabulary17Conclusion18Bibliography19Acknowledgements20IntroductionIn China, English teachers have sometimes tended to overlook the importance of lexical system. This is especially obvious in the middle school. This phenomenon might have resulted from the fact that linguists have worked out a perfect equivalent Chinese vocabulary system to English vocabulary system, so that teachers and students can more easily deal with the vocabulary than with the grammar and sound of English which are quite different from the Chinese grammar and sound system. Lexical items may also have appeared to be of secondary importance because they have sometimes been seen as that which is used to “flesh out” the structure or to exemplify parts of the sound system. However, without lexicon the major meaning-caring element in language is missing. Therefore, the acquisition of vocabulary is an integral part of English teaching. On the other hand, there are teachers who have tended to overemphasize the learning of words in the lengthy vocabulary lists. The solution is to seek scientific techniques of vocabulary teaching, so, in the following part, I will discuss three topics: I. The importance of vocabulary teaching in middle school. II: The vocabulary teaching methods of middle school. III The useful of scientific techniques of vocabulary teaching.1 The important of vocabulary teaching in middle school 1.1 The importance of word Word is one of the three basic language units (sound. word. Grammar ). It is essential to communication. 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, Foreign language study Institute,1987).1.2 The importance of vocabulary teaching in English curriculum Little children learn to speak in isolated words and then in chains of nouns and verbs. A child who says “Mum bye-bye bike” is easily understood by English-speaking adult. Students who are immersed into a new linguistic settling tend to pick up vocabulary first, and then gradually develop a more accurate, structural framework in which to use these words. And they must continually be learning words as they learn structures and as they practice the sound system. Therefore, vocabulary teaching is an important part of English lessons in middle school, and an important task for the teachers. Weather a middle school English teacher can follow scientific methods to teach vocabulary or not directly bring good or bad influence toward the students. If his methods are suitable for the students 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 diffidence toward themselves and might cause them to disgust English.2. The Vocabulary teaching methods of Middle School2.1 Three distinguishing features of English Vocabulary Before studying the better techniques in Vocabulary teaching, we had better know about the characteristics of English words. English words. English words are quite different from Chinese characters, the former one is a spelling system While the later is a stroke system, English words have three distinguishing features:i. Firstly, the pronunciation of each word is corresponded to its Spelling, for example, look at the following two lists of words:old, cold, hold, whole, so smart, artist, mark, garden In list the letter “o” in the five words are all pronounced as ;and in list the letter combination “ar” in the four words are pronounced as .If students have noticed this relationship between English pronunciation and spelling, they would be easier in pronouncing and memorizing new words. But with a long history of development and variation, and with the influence by other languages, the spelling of English words dont always observe this rule ;for example, the letter “u” is pronounced differently in the following words:Truthu:,Uncle , Until , full , music In another case, with the influence of American accent, the word “clerk ” is also pronounced as ii. Another feature of English words is that they frequently have more than one meaning. The word “book”, for example, obviously refers to something you use to read from (a written work in the form of)a set of printed pages fastened together inside a cover, as a thing to be read. According to one learners dictionary. But the same dictionary then goes on to list eight more meanings of “book” as a noun, tow meanings of “book” as a verb and three meanings where “book” +preposition makes phrasal verbs. So we will have to say that the word “book” sometimes means the kind of thing you read from, but it can also mean a number of other things. In other words, students need to understand the importance of meaning in context.iii. The third characteristic is that English words can change their shape and their grammatical values, too. Students need to know facts about word formation and how to twist words to fit different grammatical contexts. Thus the verb “run” has the participles “running” and “ran”, the present participle “running” can be used as an adjective and “run” can also be a none .There is a clear relationship between the words “death”, “dead”, “dying” and “die”. Students also need to know how suffixes and prefixes work. How can we make the words potent and .expensive opposite in meaning. Why do we preface one with in and the other with in? Knowing the three distinguishing characteristics of English vocabulary will help teachers to deliver vocabulary teaching.2.2 The drawbacks of several traditional vocabulary teaching methodsi. Teach words in isolation Middle 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 students 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” mean “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, 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 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 exploiting 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.ii. Teach English words in one to one correspondence to Chinese words. Many English teachers tend to teach English words in one to one correspondence to Chinese words; for 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 students language competence. Especially in the elementary stage, this method should be avoided as possible as it can be. When students say that they know the meaning of an English word, the usually mean that they have found an equivalent word in 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 “word” in Chinese culture refers to hot milk, because Chinese people are used to dink milk hot ; while the word “word” in the American culture 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 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.iii. Treat all words equallySome English teachers treat all vocabulary equally. That is ,they generally imply that students should be able to produce all vocabulary presented. But as is suggested by the linguists that words can be classified into receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary .according to the needs, language levels and professions of the learners. They point out that all speakers are able to recognize more words them they usually use on a productive level. Productive vocabulary is that utilized in everyday speech. Receptive vocabulary, on the other hand, although needed for comprehension, is not necessarily essential for production in speaking and writing. Teachers who do notice this fact ask students to concentrate equally on the acquisition of both receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary. This method of vocabulary teaching adds much burden to students, and would cause them to become tired of vocabulary learning.iv. Neglecting the cooperation of sense organsAccording to the experiments of linguists, an average English learner will better remember a new word and make it become an active one if he observes, speaks out ,hears and writes as well as recites it .But many teachers seem to be unaware of this rule that there are not a few students remember vocabulary by incorrect ways. On one hand, they treat the new words as if they are telephone numbers. They read the new words letter by letter without observing the Pronunciation rules. For example, when they read the word “classroom”, they do it in this way: “c-l-a-s-s-r-o-o-m, classroom” instead of “cl - - - - - - - - -, classroom”. This stupid method adds the difficulty in memorizing new words. On the other hand, since the teachers do not ask students to notice the key parts of the new words, they meet much difficulty when remembering them; for example, when a teacher teach the word “mouth” and “mouth”, if he ask the students to pay attention to the key parts of these two words, and to underline “ou” in mouth. With au above it and underline “on” in month with n1 above it, students would easily remember these two words without a mistake with their attentions to key parts Generally, a new word would well turn into an active one in students minds after at least three stages: The first stage is known as forming an acoustic link. That means students are able to link the pronunciation to the word when they hear it in a conversation. The second stage is probably forming a usual link. That is to say, when students come across this word in reading materials, they can understand it. The third stage is more difficult to achieve but very important. It is to form mental image of the word. That means they can imitate, choose and give the reign to it freely and accurately in speaking and writing as if it is their native word. Most students can only achieve the first and second stages but never reach the third stage partly due to their poor cooperation of the sense organs. v. Fail to follow the memory rule:There are two types of memory processesshortterm memory and longterm memory. Shortterm memory means that the storation of input only stay in your memory temporarily; while the longterm memory means the storation of 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 your remember it. But many teachers partially emphasize the function of shortterm memory. They seem to care more about the amount of vocabulary input than those actually stay in students memory. There might be some teachers seeing the longterm rule. However, they never succeed in applying the memory rule in classroom. They claim that the time of each period of class in limited that they cant spend so much time on the repetition of vocabulary teaching. As for as Im concerned, I dont think their excuses make any sense. What matters is their ignorance of scientific teaching techniques and irresponsibility for the development of students.vi. Harmful method of punishmentI think the worst method of vocabulary teaching is the adoption of harmful method of punishmentcopying new words for