| Vocabulary is central to language. It is closely related to every aspect of language skills such as reading, writing, listening and speaking. As a fundamental and important part of language, vocabulary is being studied by many foreign language teachers and researchers from different perspectives. Many of which contribute much to the teaching of vocabulary. Yet, many studies focus mainly on teaching vocabulary to students who are at no less than 2000-word level. There are not many empirical researches which study teaching vocabulary to students who are below the 2000-word level.With the enlargement and development of international contacts and academic exchanges, the hope to be able to master at least one foreign language is common among people in China. As the most widely studied language, English has received great attention, and English teaching methodology is spurting rapidly, too. This paper attempts to investigate the vocabulary teaching to English majors in Chinese context, especially in Guizhou province where the English level is rather low on average.The intensification of vocabulary teaching is one way to teach students initial vocabulary in advance in a short period of time and it focuses on not only the vocabulary itself but also the training of students as independent learners. In order to carry out the teaching, background information of students' vocabulary learning should be gathered.This study made an analysis of the nature of vocabulary in the process of learning foreign languages. The purpose of this research was threefold: (1) this study tended to find out students' average vocabulary level, especially the students in Guizhou University of Technology (GUT), when entering the university, through a vocabulary size test. (2) based on the achievements of the previous researches on vocabulary learning and teaching as well as the findings of the questionnaire analysis, this study aimed to find out students' preferences on learning vocabulary and some problems existing in vocabulary learning and teaching; (3) this study tended to give some suggestions to solve the problems, which could serve as references for the teachers.The author adapted and designed a vocabulary size test and a set of questionnaire, which were carried out among students majored in English at the very beginning of the first academic year in Guizhou University of Technology. Then the author made a careful analysis on the sheets from students. The results of the investigation show as follows:1. Students' vocabulary level was similar to what the author expected before the test, which was at about 1200-word level.2. Students did not attach enough importance to vocabulary learning.3. Most students spent about 30-60 minutes in learning vocabulary everyday. However, how to utilize this period of time properly was a key problem for students because without proper guide, students could not make much progress.4. Students did not understand the target language until they saw their native language explanation.5. Vocabulary learning strategies were not used properly.In short, the findings and implications provided in this thesis were expected to give ideas and methods to help our teachers improve the effectiveness of vocabulary teaching.This MA thesis consists of four chapters:Chapter One gives a brief introduction to the nature of vocabulary acquisition and the intensification of vocabulary teaching. The significance of this thesis is presented as well.Chapter Two makes a careful review to the researches in the field of vocabulary and vocabulary teaching. This part is concerned with the necessity of teaching threshold vocabulary intensively; researches on vocabulary acquisition; approaches to vocabulary teaching and learning. In addition, the role of memory in vocabulary acquisition isanalyzed.Chapter Three introduces the investigation into vocabulary learning and teaching in GUT, which have three sections: (1) it covers the present situation of English learning in GUT, the research purpo...
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