A Study On The Strategies For Vocabulary Teaching And Learning In High Schools

As is described in the syllabus, the major goal of the English teaching in high schools is to improve students' communicative competence in English, especially their reading ability. However, from English examinations, we find that most students are poor in spelling and comprehensive reading. During teaching the author finds that students have a small size of vocabulary though they have learned English for years. The author thinks a lack of vocabulary ability is the major factor that restrains reading proficiency. By conducting a survey of vocabulary learning strategies and an experimental learning, the author attempts to prove:1. devoid of effective vocabulary learning strategies on the part of students should be responsible for their insufficient vocabulary after so many years of learning.2. proper use of memorizing strategies can help learners remember the words learned and improve the retention rate.3. reading skills will be improved with the growth of vocabulary knowledge. From the results of the survey, the author finds the students employ a narrowrange of vocabulary learning strategies ?only rote strategies. In other words, they lack proper and effective vocabulary learning strategies. Neither the mnemonic devices so much valued by some psychologists nor the semantically based strategies favored by some linguists (e.g. guessing and decoding strategies) enjoyed much popularity among them. The reason is that they do not know how to use these strategies though they might know about them.In the light of the result of the survey, students of both groups were given a word list to memorize, which includes 3660 words and phrases listed in the NationalEnglish Curriculum Standard. Students in the control group memorize those words by using the rote strategies they tend to use; while those in the experimental group use some effective vocabulary learning strategies discussed. In addition, the students in the experimental group were also given sample sentences of important words and did various kinds of vocabulary exercises in context or word formation or others. After four months' experimental learning, there was a statistically difference between the mean scores of the students both in vocabulary and reading comprehension between the control group and the experimental group, and that there was a significant improvement of student performance in the experimental group. The result of the post-test has shown that the students in the experimental group benefited from effective vocabulary learning strategies; and the author also finds they lave been using reading skills more effectively with the growth of their vocabulary.Therefore, this paper presents that in English teaching of high schools, vocabulary teaching and learning should be carefully considered, and effective vocabulary learning strategies should be introduce to students so that they can memorize words easily and have a good retention; and with an increase in vocabulary knowledge, they can greatly improve their English.