The Study On Story-telling Teaching Approach To Vocabulary Learning In Primary School English Classes

Vocabulary is the first step for English beginners in primary school.It is also the basic unit of language construction.English vocabulary learning is an essential part in primary school English teaching.However,from the current situation of primary school students‘ English vocabulary learning,the problems of vocabulary memorization and high forgetting rate have been puzzling the majority of teachers and students.The story-telling teaching approach can effectively let students acquire vocabulary in the activities they are interested in,and realize the improvement of comprehensive skills.Therefore,this study takes Xi‘an Second Foreign Language School as an example to investigate the current situation of English vocabulary teaching in the story-based classroom.In this study,questionnaire was conducted among 120 students,combined with interviews with 4 English teachers and classroom observations,to investigate the current situation of story-telling teaching approach in vocabulary teaching.Then its existing problems and causes are further explored.In addition,the researcher also investigated the vocabulary learning strategies involved in story teaching.According to the researcher’s investigation,the current situation of story-telling teaching approach classroom has the following characteristics:(1)Although teachers highly approve of learning vocabulary in the story-telling teaching approach,the method is used with low frequency.(2)The theme of the story used in the class is not very close to the real life.(3)The length of the stories is too long for students.(4)Under the influence of matched courseware,the form of multimedia equipment used is single.Secondly,the data shows that the vocabulary learning strategies used by students in class include metacognitive monitoring,guessing strategy,note-taking strategy,retelling strategy and coding strategy,and they are more likely to use the guessing strategy.The study found that teachers often face the confusion of whether to teach polysemy in stories.They also have some problems in the choice of story materials and the integrity of vocabulary teaching.The reasons for the above problems are as follows: Firstly,teachers cannot carefully screen the stories due to the limitations of the textbooks selected by schools.Secondly,the teaching arrangement of school restricts the teacher‘s activity design of vocabulary teaching in the classroom,resulting in the lack of integrity of vocabulary learning.In view of the above problems,this study proposes the following suggestions: Firstly,the teacher should choose the story that suits the students according to their English level.Secondly,teachers should integrate students‘ interest and the integrity of vocabulary output in the design of classroom activities,so as to realize the effectiveness of vocabulary learning.Finally,teachers should make full use of multimedia to let students naturally contact with the new vocabulary they need to learn through multi-senses.