The Study Of English Vocabulary Teaching And Learning In Higher Vocational Schools

Vocabulary is the basis of understanding and making use of a language. Lexical competence is directly related with the ability of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. A person could not completely understand other people's words or completely express himself unless he has a certain command of vocabulary.Vocabulary is an integral part of foreign language. Therefore, learners must try their best to improve their vocabulary ability in order to become proficient in foreign language. For a language learner, no matter how well he masters the grammar or how standard his pronunciation is, he will not make smoothly communication without certain size of vocabulary. In other words, the success or failure of the ultimate goal of language teaching is greatly influenced by vocabulary teaching's efficiency.Linguists at home and abroad have contributed a lot to English vocabulary teaching, and have made a great deal of constructive research and published many books. However, most research has been conducted in universities and colleges, and the research in higher vocational schools is little. In recent years, with the rapid development of China's education system, higher vocational education has been emphasized. And different kinds of vocational schools have developed a large number of qualified professionals. Students in higher vocational schools also shoulder a heavy burden of developing our country's economy, building socialist modernization. Because the students'English achievements in vocational schools need to be improved, and once they are employed, they may have to face high-technology equipments with most instructions written in English, so it is urgent to attach importance to the teaching of English in higher vocational schools.This thesis first traces the development of English vocabulary teaching and learning at home and abroad, and then introduces the major issues about lexicology, which are morphology, meaning relations and English idioms, as theoretical foundations of Chapter Three. In order to find out the current situation on English vocabulary teaching and learning, the writer launched two questionnaires with 21 English teachers and 249 students respectively in Shandong Xiehe Vocational. Based on the problems in teachers'teaching and students'learning, the introduction of lexicology is suggested by both teachers and students in English vocabulary classroom. They believe that the introduction of lexicology can improve the effect of teachers'teaching and students'learning. The reasonableness and effectiveness of what the subjects propose was tested by an experiment in Shandong Xiehe Vocational and Technical College and Jinan Health School of Shandong Province. The experiment lasted a semester, from September 15, 2010 to January 7, 2011. After 17 weeks'classroom experiment, data from the pre-test and post-test were collected. Then the data of the two tests are processed by SPSS 17.0 and the results show: the introduction of lexicology in vocabulary teaching will certainly improve students'ability in mastering and making use of words, which proved the teachers'and students'proposals reasonable and effective. In the end, the thesis presents the teaching implications both for teachers and students, and the design of the glossary, and then points out the limitations of the present study and suggestions for the future research.