Seven-step Vocabulary Teaching Method And Its Application To The English Vocabulary Development Of New Oriental School Seniors

For years the author of this dissertation has been teaching "Reading and English Vocabulary Development" to high school seniors in Taiyuan New Oriental School, the biggest and most popular training school run by social forces. By holding interviews and having talks with the students the author found that there exist big problems in their vocabulary learning. Most of the students have used and are using the method of "learning the word lists by rote" to deal with vocabulary studies. So far as the author knows, such rigid vocabulary learning method is often used even by quite some Chinese learners of English at their beginner and intermediate stages. By appalled at the situation in English learning the author, after a seriouss study of the research achievements reached by Chinese and foreign linguists and pedagogists, adopted the "7-step" vocabulary teaching method in her classes. The method was welcomed by the students and proved to be effective. T his dissertation develops from introducing the "7-step" method used by the author to the study of the textual context-based vocabulary learning and teaching (which is the theoretical underpinnings of the method) as well as the training of the vocabulary learning strategies. At its end, tasks for teachers when conducting vocabulary teaching and also vocabulary testing techniques are provided.The dissertation consists of7chapters. An introduction is made in Chapter1, providing the background of why the author chooses the theme for her M.A. dissertation and summarizing the trends of thoughts on vocabulary learning and teaching. Chapter2reviews the relevant researches conducted by the concerned linguists and language pedagogists on contextual factors affecting vocabulary learning and development form linguistic complexity, background knowledge, frequency, vocabulary learning strategy to decontextualized vocabulary learning. Chapter3lists the research questions and the methodology used by the author. Chapter4offers a detailed description of the procedures of the Seven-Step Vocabulary Teaching which the author has been using to teach the high school seniors in Taiyuan New Oriental School. An example to clarify the method is given. Four things that teachers should do in using the method are also discussed. A detailed study of the context-based vocabulary learning and teaching, which is the essence and underpinnings of the method, is made by the author and the research achievements reached in the field are reported. Chapter5touches on the theories of vocabulary learning strategies and outlines some suggestive strategies for Chinese learners of English. Chapter6writes about the tasks for teachers of English when conducting vocabulary teaching, listing what should be taught in class and the12vocabulary testing techniques. Chapter7winds up with a conclusion.The research is aimed at providing some insights for learners who are subjectively willing to learn but objectively at a loss how to learn and memorize such a large amount of vocabulary; learners who wonder which approach is more beneficial to them; learners who are afraid of the tedious vocabulary-memorizing task; and teachers who are puzzled about effective vocabulary teaching.