An Empirical Study Of Direct & Systematic Derivational Affix Input Vocabulary Teaching Method

By comparing the derivational affixes occurring in CECC (21st Century College English data) with those in BNC, the distribution characteristics of derivational affixes of the vocabulary in 21st Century College English Coursebooks is analyzed with the aid of Visual Foxpro. Based on the data analysis and the demerits of the current vocabulary teaching methods in China, and from the perspective of vocabulary memorization and activation, an affix-oriented vocabulary teaching method is proposed, named direct and systematic derivational affix input vocabulary teaching method. Here by"direct"it means introducing derivational affix knowledge before any other vocabulary teaching methods and this input is accomplished successively without any interference. And by"systematic"it refers to introduce derivational affix knowledge as a system.This thesis reports an experiment exploring the effect of the vocabulary direct and systematic affix input teaching model on vocabulary acquisition and the ESL learners. Subjects involved in the experiment were 60 first year students majoring in Marketing in Nanjing College of Population Program Management. 30 students in class 1 would be in the experiment group (with the application of direct and systematic derivational affix input vocabulary teaching method) and 30 students in class 2 would be in the control group (without the application of direct and systematic derivational affix input vocabulary teaching method). The experiment is designed to last ten weeks, a mid-test taken in the fifth week and a post-test taken in the tenth week. From the results of the two tests, the performance is improved in both experiment group and control group, while the performance of experiment group improved more significantly. When the experiment ended, a questionnaire was carried out on the 30 students in experiment group. All vocabulary tests of 60 subjects were administrated during class time and the response rate was 100 percent. This study attempts to address the two essential questions as follows:1) As a new method of vocabulary teaching, is direct and systematic derivational affix input conducive to the vocabulary acquisition of college ESL learners?2) Is this new method more effective than the traditional vocabulary teaching methods?All the experiment data were analyzed by software SPSS. The result indicates that the direct-and-systematic affixes input vocabulary teaching method is conducive to the vocabulary acquisition of college ESL learners. And there is a significant difference in the performance between experiment group (with the application of direct and systematic derivational affix input vocabulary teaching method) and control group (without the application of direct and systematic derivational affix input vocabulary teaching method). However, there also appeared somewhat complexity and imbalance in the application of the new teaching model. According to the analysis errors of derivational affixes in the test answer sheets, the author points out some possible causes that may lead to errors briefly. To some extent, the results suggest that when learners acquire the knowledge of derivational affixes and utilize the rules, the new vocabulary teaching method can be beneficial for enlarging the vocabulary breadth and vocabulary activation.