Vocabulary Instruction Through Communication

The study and instruction of vocabulary has long been in a neglected position. In the 1990s, the development of corpus restimulated attention among researchers and teachers on vocabulary teaching and learning. They focused their research on vocabulary size, word knowledge, vocabulary learning strategies. In the meantime, all these factors are also embodied in various coursebooks.The main body of this thesis consists of three chapters. The introduction chapter offers the definition of vocabulary, examines the reasons for neglecting vocabulary teaching in the past and the awareness of its importance in recent decades. Chapter two provides a comparatively complete review on relations between grammar and vocabulary, the aim and elements of vocabulary instruction. Vocabulary learning strategies are also elaborated. Chapter three shifts its attention to vocabulary instruction in different teaching approaches including Grammar-Translation Method, Audiolingual Method, Situational Method, and Communicative Method. The fourth chapter deals with vocabulary instruction in the selected textbooks: Xu Guozhang's English, New Concept English, New English 900, and Li Xiaoju's CECL, trying to find out how vocabulary is instructed respectively in them.The author also recommends some pedagogical implications: (1) giving priority to communication in the process of vocabulary learning and teaching; (2) including vocabulary selection in textbooks with criterion explicitly stated; (3) giving more attention to collocation and multi-word items, especially those that are characteristically difficult for Chinese students; (4) presenting diverse contexts to explain different meanings of basic words; (5) taking into account learners' needs; (6) setting up a course of Vocabulary Learning Strategies.