毕业论文(设计)--初中英语词汇教学的误区及对策--专业论文.doc

编号 090401118

毕业论文

（ 2013 届本科）

题 目： 初中英语词汇教学的误区及对策
学 院： 外国语学院
专 业： 英 语
作者姓名： 蒙 新 文
指导教师： 韩 燕 职称： 讲 师
完成日期： 2013 年 5 月 25 日

二○一三年五月

24

河西学院本科生毕业论文（设计）诚信声明

本人郑重声明：所呈交的本科毕业论文（设计），是本人在指导老师的指导下，独立进行研究工作所取得的成果，成果不存在知识产权争议，除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的作品成果。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律结果由本人承担。

作者签名：
二O一三 年 五月二十五日

On Problems and Strategies in English Vocabulary Teaching
of Junior Middle School

Meng Xinwen

Under the Supervision of
Han Yan

College of Foreign Languages and Literature
Hexi University
May 2013

Contents

Abstract(English) i
Abstract(Chinese) ii

1. Introduction 6
2. Problems in Junior Middle School English Vocabulary Teaching 8
2.1 Teaching All Vocabulary Before Text Learning 8
2.2 Stressing All Vocabulary Without Any Focus 11
2.3 Demonstrating All The Usage of a Word in Class 12
2.4 Teaching Vocabulary in a Boring Way Without Context 14
3. Vocabulary Teaching Strategies in Junior Middle School 15
3.1 Visual Instruction 15
3.2 Situation Teaching 17
3.3 Context Teaching 19
3.4 Vocabulary Interpretation 20
3.5 Word-Building 21
3.6 Word Classification 21
4. Conclusion 23
References 24
Acknowledgements 25

Abstract

Vocabulary is the building material of language. Therefore, vocabulary study is one of the most important parts in any language learning and it plays a key role in language acquisition. However, students feel vocabulary learning is one of the difficult tasks, especially for middle school students. They learn vocabulary by Chinese. English teaching is indispensable to vocabulary teaching. According to the extension of social, science and technology and innovation. But in English teaching, vocabulary teaching is the most difficult problem has been plagued by teachers. Through vocabulary teaching for problem analysis. Put forward some effective vocabulary teaching strategies, By using these strategies effectively, junior students can promote their interests of English vocabulary learning and improve their vocabulary leaning efficiency.

Key words: junior middle school English vocabulary teaching; problems；
strategies

中文摘要

词汇是语言的建构材料，词汇学习是语言学习的重要组成部分，它对语言学习者语言能力的提高有着至关重要的作用。然而，词汇学习是许多学生，尤其是中学生感到较困难的学习任务。他们大多注重汉语意义并使用汉语拼音来帮助学习单词，忽视单词的拼写联系，重语义轻语法，。与此同时，词汇教学也是英语教师在教学中较难处理的教学任务，教师在词汇教学中忽视学生主体地位， 运用传统教学方法教授词汇且缺乏词汇教学策略。因此，本文通过教师在初中英语词汇教学误区的分析，提出了一些应对策略，改善词汇教学，提高初中英语词汇教学的效率。

关键词：初中英语词汇教学；误区；对策

1. Introduction
Vocabulary is the basic element of language. Without it, language would no longer exist. Therefore, foreign language study is closely associated with vocabulary study. Through researches scholars have found that lexical problems frequently interfere with communication. And the second language learners generally hold the view that it is vocabulary, not grammar that hinders them from communication with others in the target language, with the reason that vocabulary carries the basic information they need to understand and express. In the thesis, it is viewed that learning English vocabulary makes great contribution to the improvement of English study; in order to improve students English level, qualified acquisition of the vocabulary is easy to wipe off the biggest obstacle in listening, speaking, reading and writing, which all depend on vocabulary largely. However, both learners and teachers have ignored vocabulary study for a long time, which results in slow progress in English learning. So the great importance of vocabulary in English study is pointed out, but vocabulary can’t be learned by rote.
All languages have words. Language emerges first as words, both historically, and in terms of the way each of us learned our first and any subsequent languages. Experimental study of the acquisition of a second language has reported about the interrelationship of reading and vocabulary learning. Vocabulary is a key element in language learning because a wide productive vocabulary is essential in enhancing the four language skills. Reading specialists concur that vocabulary should be the focus in language instruction from the beginning stages.
Chamot (1987) said that: “Vocabulary teaching strategy refers to students take techniques, methods and meaningful actions in order to prompt study and memorize language and contexts information.” M. McCarthy (1990) indicates, “No matter how good one’s grammar is and how beautiful one’s pronunciation is, but if one has no adequate vocabulary to express one’s own feelings or to understand others’ opinions, one still cannot communicate with others in this language”. Vocabulary is the most important one of the three major components that constitutes English language; it is the foundation of any kind of communication. However, vocabulary learning is the most difficult task in students’ study. It is, therefore, especially important to study vocabulary learning strategies and the teaching of vocabulary learning strategies. Because of poor communication, little knowledge, having a narrow range of the knowledge, inactive thinking and slow capacity to receive etc, the junior high students have worse interpersonal skills, understanding, memory, thinking ability and move ability etc, and these obstruct the efficiency of their English study. Because of their lack of necessary instruction and training, some of the junior high students have inappropriate method of English study and bad self-educated ability. The junior high students have more vulnerable psychological quality, particularly when they face the pressure of college entrance examination. These students are very sensitive to the success of English study. When they meet frustrate, this will influence their confidence in continues learning English well.
Wen Qiufang (1996), believes that English language learning strategies include two subsystems一concepts and methods. When most of these students go to junior middle schools, they have to remember great quantities of vocabularies, phrases, sentences, but most students know nothing about a phonetic symbol, and they often pronounce vocabularies with the help of Chinese, and learn vocabularies by rote. When they are in Grade Seven, they can still cope with vocabularies, because of few contents and simple vocabularies. But along with the increment of the grade, the deepening of English content and the increase in vocabulary, the students feel that the memory of vocabulary has become the biggest obstacle in English study. Hence, they are disgusted with English study gradually. Even some students want to give up this subject. Therefore, there is necessity to re-study and instruct the students’ vocabulary memory and help the students set up confidence, control a method and overrun the difficult pass in vocabulary.
The traditional English teaching method used in China is divided into two parts of the grammar teaching and vocabulary teaching. Class, teachers spend a lot of time on grammar and vocabulary; After class, students, especially middle school students, spend most of their time on practice and memorizing words. Holding the dictionary and reciting in alphabetical order back dictionary have even become one scene in many colleges and universities. The students who have learned English for years and memorized words more than five thousand, however, most of them still make mistakes and can’t express their ideas as clearly as possible.
2. Problems in Junior Middle School English Vocabulary Teaching
Vocabulary teaching is the teaching emphasis and difficulty in English, however, in the teaching process will often appear some problems. In general, these problems mainly display in the following respects.
2.1 Teaching All Vocabulary Before Text Learning
Junior 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:
①She is near her time. (means “She would die soon.”)
②The umpire called time. (means “The umpire called for a stop.”)
③He is in the time of his life. (means “The days he is experiencing are very enjoyable.”)
And many Chinese middle school students often make such sentences as:
①The policies adopted by the Chinese Communist Party is beneficial.
②My spoken-English is very bad.
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 be changed into “poor”).
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, they usually mean that they have found an equivalent word in Chinese language, but this equivalent word may be misleading. Let’s 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 milk hot; while the word “milk” 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. Since most students learn vocabulary by depending on school education and they have so many problems, it’s easy to know that there are also some problems of vocabulary teaching. The first problem is that the teaching method is single and boring, and it is hard to interest or activate students. Many students say that their teachers are teacher-oriented and not considerate enough. Still even students have expressed their opinions, their teachers still maintain their teaching methods and make no changes to meet students’ needs. Ignore students’ main body status. Teachers should develop students’ intelligence in vocabulary teaching, pay attention to students’ observation, memory, imagination, thinking and the cultivation of creative ability. However, the vocabulary rules should be summed up by the students in vocabulary teaching is done by their teachers. Teachers only pay attention to their own teaching, and neglected the students’ learning. In fact, the teacher should understand their own role and function. In the teaching process, teacher’s role is to guide, rather than dominate; students are the theme of the classroom. Teachers should guide students to sum up law by themselves. “To teach fishing is better than teach them to fish”. Only the students truly mastered the method, can they do get twice the result with half the effort in learning vocabulary. The second problem is that there are no priorities in vocabulary teaching. According to the collecting information, students complain that their teachers just ask them to learn all the words whether they are necessary to memorize or not. Students hope teachers pay attention to those words used very often in our daily life but not the complicated and long words that seldom used or seen. And it is really stressful and painstaking to memorize all. Moreover, teachers should not just teach the usage and meaning of vocabulary but also make comparisons and classifications, especially the synonyms, which are rather confusing teachers are lack of contact with students’ life. And the teachers, who come from the high grade, they command the English more, but they can’t acquaint themselves with the children’s psychological character and can’t command their interests. They use the ways that used in high grade to teach the children which make the children understand them difficultly and learning hard, what’s more, make the children losing interests in English learning or even boring the subject.
Also there are some other problems: the transfer teachers can't understand English very well, and their pronunciations are lacking of standardization. Such a corps of teachers could not build up a contingent of high-caliber English talent. Besides, some teachers’ quality is also not high who treat the student bad or give the student corporal punishment, these interim measures against the students to grasp of English knowledge and improve the comprehensive standard.
2.2 Stressing All Vocabulary Without Any Focus
Some 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 than they usually use on a productive l