A Study Of Guessing Strategies In English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior Middle Schools

Nowadays, vocabulary learning is becoming the focus of linguistic research and the research has often been conducted within the field of applied linguistics. Nation claims that"learners feel that many of their difficulties in both receptive and productive language use result from an inadequate vocabulary"(Nation, 1990:2). So more and more scholars and professionals have noticed that vocabulary learning is the basic and indispensable step in foreign language learning.The thesis first reviews the history of teaching English vocabulary, and then presents the status of teaching English vocabulary in senior middle schools. According to Senior English Curriculum Standards (experimental) for middle schools (2003), in order to cultivate senior middle school students'independent learning ability, it is necessary for the teachers to teach students some knowledge of learning strategies, and it is the purpose of this research. The hypothesis-testing theory on the cognitive psychology is introduced in this thesis, for it reveals the process of human beings'learning. It provides an important evidence for the guessing strategies.A great deal of literature and information indicates that guessing meanings of unknown words through contextual clues and word structure can enlarge learners'vocabulary size. Based on the relevant theories and studies, the research was undertaken to examine four questions: (1) Can the guessing strategy effectively enhance senior middle school students'vocabulary? (2) Does their original vocabulary size influence the training result? (3) Which group of students achieve more, the advanced or the poor? (4) What types of guessing do students more easily grasp?The research was conducted through the following procedures: Firstly the students took a pre-test on vocabulary size,in order to know their original vocabulary size. Then the students in the experimental class (EC) were trained to derive meaning from context clues for 10 weeks. After that,a post-test on the students'vocabulary size was given to see if there was an obvious increase.Finally, the conclusion was achieved: (1) The guessing strategy can effectively enhance middle school students'vocabulary although their vocabulary was limited at the beginning. (2) The original vocabulary size does influence the training result. (3) The advanced students achieve more than the poor ones. (4) As for types of guessing—guessing words from definition and from antonym and contrast, the students master them more easily.Contribution of this thesis is that this effective guessing strategy is applied to the English vocabulary learning for senior middle schools. In short, as long as it is utilized properly, much better learning effects can be obtained.