Concept Attainment Model And College Students Acqisition Ability Of Active Vocabulary

College students have already mastered much linguistic knowledge of English when they enter college, but that does not necessarily mean that they could use the language fluently and successfully in communication, translating and writing in English. The main cause of the problems in these three aspects is that students'active vocabulary is too limited. In this case, students do need opportunities and guidance to expand their active vocabulary. Then, what and how the teacher should guide students to acquire active vocabulary in class is considered. Concept attainment model which is based on cognitive theories stresses that word meaning cannot be assimilated by the child in a ready-made form but have to undergo a certain development. The acquisition of the words depends on the cooperation between the student and the teacher. In the teaching activity guided by this model, students play an important role while the teacher is only a guider. Adopting concept attainment model is helpful to improve college students'acquisition ability of active vocabulary. However, there are few researches on how to apply this model to vocabulary teaching practice. The aim of this thesis is to inspect, through experiment, whether concept attainment model is effective in the college English vocabulary teaching practice to non-English majors, and how to help them develop a good habit of acquiring active vocabulary. In order to test the feasibility of such a teaching model, two classes are employed to receive different instructions. Experimental class is given courses based on concept attainment model.. While, at the same time, the other class is still taught in a traditional way of vocabulary teaching . After one-term training, it turns out that all those studies and experiments indicate the necessity, feasibility and practicality of the concept attainment model in vocabulary teaching.