Comparative Research On The Contribution To Vocational College Students' Command Of Vocabulary Of Grammar Translation And Communicative Language Teaching Approaches

Vocabulary is the basic element of language communication. Mastering the vocabulary is one of the key factors for learning a language. Professionals have made a large number of researches about learning vocabulary from different aspects, but little has been done to investigate the vocabulary teaching in vocational colleges. Moreover, to what extent different teaching methods facilitate vocational college students'vocabulary size hasn't been made so far. This thesis is to investigate the vocabulary size of vocational college students and effectiveness of applying two typical teaching approaches, Grammar Translation and Communicative Language Teaching, by conducting an empirical study. Given insufficient materials on the vocabulary size of vocational college students and the want of research that examines the effectiveness of two teaching methods on improving the vocabulary, this study is worthy to be carried out.The subjects chosen for this study are third-year students from two classes in Jinan Normal School, a five-year college.35 students from one class form the experimental group through Communicative Language Teaching method during the whole experiment, while 37 students from another class treated as the control group have been taught through Grammar Translation method in the present study. Then SPSS 15.0, the powerful computer software on statistics, is used to quantitatively analyze the results of vocabulary pre-test and post-test, and then the results of the interview are processed. Eventually, the main findings are obtained and presented as follows:1) The vocabulary of vocational college students is far lower than that of Basic Requirements for College English Teaching in Vocational and Technical Colleges.2) Both Grammar Translation method and Communicative Language Teaching method can facilitate vocational college students'vocabulary size effectively.3) Compared with Grammar Translation method, Communicative Language Teaching method is more effective to improve the students'vocabulary but not significantly.4) As far as the vocational college students are concerned, the combination of the two teaching methods will be more helpful to vocabulary learning. Finally, on the basis of the findings, several pedagogical suggestions on how to improve vocational college students'vocabulary are proposed.