Vocabulary Teaching: From Perspectives To Strategies

While English teaching and learning is flourishing in China with its own characteristics, a gradual but prominent shift has taken place with greater emphasis put on learner autonomy than on teachers' teaching. Importance is therefore attached to language learning strategies. However, since vocabulary learning is brain-based work, and to a great extent, it cannot be independent of teachers' instruction, strategies for teaching vocabulary is essential if achievements in the field of lexicology are exploited from particular psycholinguistic perspectives.The first part of the dissertation relates to relevant psycholinguistic perspectives. Since teaching and learning English vocabulary is a kind of brain-based work,- it becomes especially significant for language teachers to understand and use psycholinguistic observations and hypotheses on memory, mental lexicon, motivation and attention. The teacher also has to consider other variables which affect storage. Language teachers' main concern is to ensure that what is taught will be permanently retained in long term memory, so it is of primary importance that classroom activities take account of these relevant theories, and strive to combat decay and interference while developing and facilitating efficient retrieval systems.The second part presents some fundamental pedagogical considerations in vocabulary teaching. As current textbooks and other teaching materials play an important role in almost all types of educational institutions, those traditional, grammar-focused textbooks must be adapted and supplemented to cater for the ever growing stress being placed on communication. There are three main aspects the language teacher should put into consideration: selecting vocabulary teaching contents; satisfying learners' vocabulary needs and observing learners' load and pace.The third part stands at the core of this paper for it provides a series of suggestive strategies for vocabulary teaching on the bases of lexicology and psycholinguistics. It is applicable to almost all typesof vocabulary teaching to develop learners' morphological ability, to give learners instruction in pronunciation when necessary, to enhancing learners' sensitivity to nuances of meaning, to help learners' explore sense relations and semantic fields (in vocabulary teaching and learning, sense relations are of paramount importance); and to encourage learner autonomy inside and outside classrooms.The teacher can play the role to the ultimate degree as a controller, assessor, organizer and prompter; at the same time, the teacher is also a participant, model and resource in teaching activities. In vocabulary teaching, the teacher's ultimate goal is to cultivate learners' ability to activate vocabulary items effectively and automatically.