English Vocabulary Teaching in Situations.doc

English Vocabulary Teaching in SituationsAbstract: This paper analyses the essence of teaching vocabulary within situation. It reveals the corrupt practice of the traditional method, brings to light the advantage of teaching vocabulary within situation. According to the paper, it advocates teaching vocabulary with situation focus on the beginners. It tells the different between the first and second language by the theory of the language psychology. Depending on the psychology characteristics of the teen-ages, teaching vocabulary with situation is a good way for the beginners to learn vocabulary. Though such teaching method requires thought and planning on the part of the teachers, it can make the learners learn the vocabulary easily and the class atmosphere vivid.摘 要: 本文剖析用情景教单词的实质，揭示传统教单词法的弊端，分析情景法教词汇的优点。根据语言心理学理论分析在学习过程中第一和第二语言的不同点，通过对一般初学者心理特征理论的研究，情景法教单词正符合他们学习上的心理特征。虽然情景教单词法对老师的课程设计要求较高，但使用情景教单词法能使学习者更容易掌握单词并能使课堂气氛活跃。Key Words: Situation Vocabulary English teaching关 键 词： 情景 单词 英语教学法Introduction“It is hard to learn the vocabulary.” has becomes students pet phrase. Some of them pay much attention to the vocabulary, but have less effect. Some of them become tired of it and some even give it up. How terrible it will be! Vocabulary plays an important part on English learning. Without vocabulary in English learning equals to the cleverest housewife cannot cook a meal without rice.For a long time, the traditional method of teaching vocabulary by pure explanation plays an important part on English teaching. In fact, the method is boring and it is known as cramming method of teaching. As the students have to learn much more English, more and more corrupt practice of the traditional method exist.Much more people have accepted teaching vocabulary within situation after the practice and study by the researchers. Such theory depends on the psychology characteristics of the teen-ages, language psychology, the study of second language learning and language teaching and the study of second language vocabulary acquisition. Teaching Vocabulary with SituationNowadays, teaching within situation becomes a popular topic among teaching areas. It is unsuitable to launch a movement for teaching within situation at every area. Sometimes it wastes manpower but it is different to teach vocabulary. The paper advocates teaching vocabulary with situation focus on the beginners. Many English teachers still use the traditional method to teach vocabulary .The teachers imbue the students with ready-made knowledge by narration and instruction and make them recite it. The teachers teach it and the students learn it. It seems effective. With complete repetition, the students have no reason to get involved or to think about what they are saying. Indeed, some students who have no idea what the sentences mean may successfully repeat them anyway, while their minds wander off to other things. After a long time, the students find it difficult to accept new gradation of knowledge with the infirm knowledge basis. That is because the students get learning by only complete reciting but not get the ability of thinking by real understanding.Without thinking, you cannot keep the things in your mind for a long time. Besides, the atmosphere of the class will be inflexible and the students have less interest in the class, which affects the teaching effectiveness .For example, “Today we are going to learn”Such a beginning of the class can't lead the active intelligence activity .Why it may not the students accept it? Because such the beginning suggests it is none of the students business, it is nothing to do with the students' prior experience. However, if you begin the class such as “Good morning, last week we won the tug-of-war competition .Are you excited? Are you happy? OK, what about talking about the competition and let me read an article about tug-of-war for you?”The beginning, which connects with the students experience, can arouse the students enthusiasm.Creating a proper situation before teaching is an important part of English teaching, which may make the class vivid and involve in the class. What is teaching vocabulary within situation? It gives the vocabulary a situation, which makes the new word no longer lonely but has a jolly time with their familiar friends. Such a procedure may provide comprehensible input. Given a familiar meaningful context, learners can comprehend the general meaning of some new words, which they certainly have not mastered or seen .It not only enlivens the atmosphere of the class but also makes the student know how to use the words. English is a second language to us and learning a second language is not simply a process of putting second-language words into first-language sentences. We may find that aspects of the second language, which are different from the first language, will not be necessarily acquired later without keeping on learning it, because it will not exist everywhere in your life environment and it will be much more difficult for people to learn that second language without a appropriate language environment, which are not similar to the first language. On the other hand, if the students learn the new vocabulary without appropriate situation, it will be terrible. The errors will be caused by the overextension of some partial similarity between the first and the second languages and these errors may be difficult to overcome too. This may be particularly problematic if learners are frequently in contact with other learners who make the same errors, which make the errors go all around the class.English is a language and it is meaningful. It is suitable to make it exist in an appropriate situation and make it meaningful. Why does the paper promote teaching vocabulary within situation on the beginners but not others? Having certain basis of English, the senior students have their own learning methods and their abilities to study independently. Compare with the junior students, they have higher consciousness. It doesn't mean they don't need any teachers to teach them. Since the senior students have to learn much more than the junior students do. It is unnecessary for the teachers and the senior students to spend the time on vocabulary within situation, and it is not practical to waste too much time on vocabulary. In their opinion, time is knowledge. They would like to race against time to get as much as knowledge directly but not waste the time on foreshadowing the knowledge. At the same time, during the phase of child, children are very imitative, so they can accept the direct information easily. Depending on the psychology characteristics of the teen-ages, they are thirst for knowledge, like to show off, like to create. All of that can be showed on teaching within situation, which can make the students audacious, positive on study. It is a progress from daring to say, daring to express to knowing how to say and being good at express, which make the students understand the meaning and value of learning English. Pure in mind, low in consciousness, the beginners need more attention from the teachers. The teachers have to find some ways to arouse the study interesting of the students. Teaching vocabulary within situation is a good way to arouse their study interesting. Early in 1886,the psychologist J.M.Cattell found WSE (Word Superionty Effect). It said that the letter in a meaning word is easier to be distinguished than the letter in a meaningless word under the condition of high-speed present. For a long time, many researchers such as Henderson (1975) Jebersan (1964) Kristofferson (1957) Glaze (1928) have done so many experiments to prove that words can be remembered easier when it is in a meaningful environment. Early in 1963, Tulving and Gold found that context is an important factor to affect distinguishes of words. At the same time, a word may have different meanings that will make you confuse when it is single. But it will be much clearer when you give it an appropriate situation. Krashen, one researcher in second language acquisition has said that only when the learners get the comprehensible input from the words, they can understand it. The progress of language learning depends on the comprehensible input is a little higher than the learners' comprehensible level. That means, if we put a new thing in a recognizable environment that we know can make the new thing much easier to understand or to guess. For the learners, if the teacher put a new word in a familiar situation or a sentence that the learners understand can make the new word understood easily. Such as the babies learn their mother tongues during their communication activities. Since every new thing becomes meaningful within a situation, they learn it unconsciously, which is the best way to learn a language Hall(1992) made some experiments in learning vocabulary for some students aged from eleven to thirteen and found that the vocabulary learning of students working on some activities was greater than that of students working within a teacher-fronted arrangement with a reading focus. A study by Elley (1989) provided empirical evidence of incidental vocabulary learning for the learners aged from seven to eight involved in listening to stories in which there was repetition of the new words, illustrations of the new words, and understanding through context. Elley recorded the learners can get 15% new words which have no explanation and 40% new words which have explanation. Such result shows that the acquisition of vocabulary in a contest where attention is on meaningful activities and not on language itself.Teacher as a director can use some methods to lead the students to a situation, which is a familiar language environment. Some teachers may give consideration to connected vocabulary learning into communicative activities like listening to stories, information gap activities and group work. Vocabulary will not often be the main learning goal of activities. Such activities require thought and planning on the part of the teachers. Although the range of types of such activities is large, all provide learners with opportunities to use language in meaningful imitate situation.There are two kinds of situation in teaching. Both are simulate. One is contextual meaning, which explains the contextual of the text or the background of the social culture. Such situation provides enough examples and makes the language vivid. For example, the leading of the text. Before begin the new lesson, it is very important for the teacher to find a suitable way to introduce the new text for the whole class and make the whole class pay attention to it. Usually the good teaching can let the whole class make good use of the 40 minutes. It is not difficult to choose what way to introduce the new text. Usually, teacher will use a story to introduce some narrative and use some question to introduce some exposition.The expanding of the text. On the background of the text, the teachers can make the students create some plots with certain situation. Such complicated plots or thought- provoking stories may give free rein to the students imagination and tap their intellectual resources. The other is creating a certain situation for students to train. The range of imitating a certain situation is very large such as: Material presents situation. Teacher can use some real things such as apple, orange, grape or banana to present the fruits' English names, or even they can use some materials of the classroom to present some vocabularies such as blackboard, desk, picture , door Life presents situation. Teacher can create a life situation to present what a shopkeeper and a customer are. There will be two students; one is to act as a shopkeeper when the other student acts as a customer in a shop. They talk to each other using the shopping language. Such as “What can I do for you?” Movement demonstrates situation. Teacher can give a thing for the students to guess by her vivid description, which make the students pay more attention to the word and remember the word more easily. Or if the teacher wants to introduce “What about doing?”They can create a situation by language, such as “Tomorrow is Sunday, we will be free tomorrow. Lily and Jack are talking about where to go and play tomorrow” Then the teacher acts as lily and says, “what about going swimming ?”Then the teacher changes another tone to act as Jack and says, “What about playing football?” Dialogue presents situation. The teacher can make a dialogue with the students or let the students make a dialogue with each other. The teacher finds two students who sit in different rows and asks them “Which row are you in?” When one answers, “I am in Row2.” and the other answers, “I am in Row3.” The teacher can say, “You are in different rows” emphasizing the “different”. The teacher finds two students who are in the same row and asks them the same question. They both answer, “I am in Row 4.” So the teacher can say, “You are in the same row.” emphasizing the “same”. After that, the students can understand the meaning of “same” and “different” and remember them in mind unconsciously.Song creates situation. Using some connected new words to make a song, which makes the students become so interested in it and can make the students remember the words for a long time. It can also make the atmosphere of the class vivid. Picture presents situation. When a teacher wants to teach some new words about animals, it is impossible to take a real tiger to a classroom to teach the word “tiger”. But they can use some colorful pictures to show some animals such as panda, snake, cow, sheep and so on.Contrast present situation. When the teacher wants to teach antonym, they can ask a tall boy and a short boy to stand in front of the students and teach “tall” and “short”. They also can use some contrast materials to teach big, small, thick, thinAudio-visual education programmer presents situation. During the English teaching, teacher can use video recorder, projection, tape-recorder or epidiascope to create an English communication situation, which is pleasing to the eye, pleasing to the ear, and pleasing to the heart. From that, the students can use their eyes to see, their ears to listen to, their mouths to speak, their hands to write, their mind to think on the study activities, which brings every positive factor of the students into play. For example the teacher can teach what storm, earthquake and flood are in the class by the audio-visual education programmer. Teacher can find some short meaningful stories for the students to make a performance. As a player, one must participate actively. At the same time, the other must concentrate by observing what others do. Players take part in all of the international configurations, which are important in