Strategies For Active Vocabulary Instruction For Non-English Majors In Vocational Colleges

Vocabulary is one of the important parts of a language and it plays an essential role in verbal communication and language instruction. Just as the British Linguist D. A. Wilkins said, "Without grammar very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed."However, vocabulary instruction, compared with grammar teaching and phonetics teaching, is still a weak point in foreign language teaching studies. For decades, scholars and teaching experts home and abroad have worked on English vocabulary teaching from different aspects, but how learners master vocabulary in an all-sided and more effective way is still a problem to be solved; And vocabulary teaching is still a head-breaking question to both foreign language teachers and students and more challenging and difficult for vocational college teachers and students whose English level is much lower than general university students', especially non-English majors'. Nevertheless, according to the author's literature review, most of the studies on vocabulary teaching in China or foreign countries have focused on undergraduates and postgraduates, and then middle school students, and students in vocational colleges are the least concentrated on; studies on active vocabulary teaching are even fewer, no mature theories can be used as references at the present time in China and no data can be found for non-English majors' vocabulary teaching in vocational colleges.In order to get a clear picture of non-English majors' active vocabulary teaching and learning today, the author first conducted a survey by testing on non-English major' vocabulary size and active vocabulary size in three vocational colleges, and by a questionnaire on teachers' teaching strategies and methods in Zibo Vocational Institute, where the author works. Based on the data collected, the author chose two classes in Zibo Vocational Institute, one ( P07 Accounting Class Three) being the experimental class and the other (P07 Software Class One) the control class and carried out active vocabulary teaching experiments. Analyzing with SAS, results show that the experimental class taught in active vocabulary teaching pattern improved a lot in mean vocabulary size, while the control class, taught in traditional vocabulary teaching pattern, did not make any progress, instead, the mean vocabulary size decreased compared to its pre-test, which indicates that active vocabulary teaching plays an active role in promoting vocational college students' English vocabulary study and consequently promoting students' English language acquisition.Despite limitations the author hopes this study could be of some value to the future research on vocabulary learning and of some help to improving English vocabulary teaching, especially to non-English majors' English vocabulary teaching in vocational colleges.