A Research On Appreciation Education In English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High Schools

With the deepening of educational reform, people have changed their educational ideas. Education is not to train students to get high scores and low capabilities, but to foster students'overall development in body and mind. In teaching practice, teachers should be learner-centered and should promote each student to be useful in society. Appreciation education adapts itself to the current developmental trend of education. It is a kind of teaching method with which teachers motivate their students by positive stimulation in order to encourage them in their studies. Compared with the traditional teaching method, it is more appropriate for Chinese students because this kind of teaching method admits individual differences, respects individual differences and allows failure in study. The key of appreciation is to help every student realize "I am a good student!" "I can do it!" and achieve success at last.In English teaching, the author feels deeply that vocabulary size of the senior high school students has enlarged a lot. Facing so many words, it is relatively easy for some students to deal with, but the majority of students still feel puzzled, they don't know what to do with these words. As we all know, vocabulary is the language's building blocks. If students cannot master a certain amount of vocabulary, they will never learn English well. Hence, the author intends to apply appreciation education to vocabulary teaching aiming at probing into students'level of interest and improving students' efficiency of learning vocabulary. The paper combines quantitative research with qualitative research, and it is based on the theory of Rogers' humanistic approach. Two questionnaires are made for 120 students together with some students'interview after the experiment at No.6 Middle School in Wuhai, Inner Mongolia with the purpose of learning about students'affect and attitudes towards vocabulary learning before and after the experiment. The vocabulary experiment's subjects are the first year students in parallel classes Class 10 and Class 13. In order to compare the changes of students' scores, the author makes pre-tests and post-tests of vocabulary and total scores. After one term of the experimental studies, it shows that appreciation education not only can greatly motivate students to learn vocabulary and construct a democratic and relaxed classroom atmosphere, but also increase their vocabulary and thus improve their language abilities.This thesis consists of the following parts. Chapter One is Introduction, including research questions, research methods and so on; Chapter Two is Literature Review, it introduces relative theories of appreciation education and definition of its core concepts; Chapter Three makes a survey of high school students'English vocabulary learning; Chapter Four mainly gives a brief introduction to appreciation education's practical application and problems; Chapter Five is results and discussion about the experiment of vocabulary teaching under appreciation education, and ends the conclusion.