Vocabulary Teaching Strategies In Senior Middle Schools In Line With The New Criteria Of English Course

Vocabulary is undoubtedly important in English language study. It's the basis for the development of the 5 skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation. So it seems especially important for us to adopt a scientific teaching strategy in vocabulary teaching. The new criterion of English course in senior middle school makes great demands on vocabulary in language studies. As a result, whether the problem of vocabulary can be solved or not is closely related to the success of the reform of English course.Laufer (1992:27) pointed out in 1990, language learners study vocabulary mainly in two ways: direct vocabulary study and additional study. In recent years, an increasing number of people are paying more attention to the manageable factor of the learner himself on study. Many western scholars consider independent developing strategy an important part. Oxford and Scarcella think that the teacher should teach the students clear vocabulary skills to enlarge their vocabulary. Norbere (2000) introduces several strategies including social strategy, determination strategy etc. Chinese scholar Wang Duqin(2002) has made a profound theoretical study on the connotative and extensive meaning of vocabulary teaching. He puts up a systemic view on vocabulary teaching strategy such as classroom organization, appraisal, study incentive and strategy development etc.Many people only focus on how to teach or how to learn vocabulary. Yet the writer aims to study how to teach the students to learn. That is a combination of teaching and learning, in order to balance the learning and studying strategy of vocabulary in daily life. In the process of English teaching, the writer thinks much has to be improved in the traditional vocabulary teaching which lacks theory, systems and effectiveness. As a result, the writer adopts a systematic research and suggests a series of teaching strategies in line with the New Criteria of English Course.This thesis focuses on teaching strategy, how to teach the students to learn. It starts from the present state of the vocabulary teaching in senior middle school, adopts associative memorizing, reversive, stylistic and pragmatic strategies, cultural and extensive strategies, and attempts to find out how to teach vocabulary more scientifically and effectively in the new course environment.Associative strategy includes lateral and vertical association. The former means the teacher should teach the student to make associations when mentioning a certain word. Lateral association consists of synonym association and antonym association. Vertical association refers to the fact that all the words with the same root are connected. Associative strategy also includes association of words similar in form and pronunciation, etc. Reversive Strategy is based on the reversive way of English study sponsored by Zhong Daplong which emphasizes listening and writing. Pragmatic strategy pays much attention to the cultivation of students' stylistic awareness so that they can choose suitable word to refer to different items in different circumstances.Cultural strategy means the teacher should not only tell the students a word's literal meaning, but also the word's rich cultural connotations. The writer attaches great importance to the cultivation of students' cultural awareness in order that they may realize the great difference between Chinese and English culture. During this process, she gradually forms her own cultural strategy in vocabulary teaching. Extensive strategy means a combination of in-class study with extra-curricular studies. It includes vocabulary teaching with the help of multi-media technology, organizing students to see English movies, TV, videos;encouraging them to take part in English corner;reading more English magazines and newspapers. In this way, the students can develop interest in English study and get access to more words and enlarge vocabulary.Meanwhile, the writer uses a lot of vivid teaching examples to illustrate her viewpoints and hopes this thesis could be of some help for teachers to teach vocabulary teaching in senior middle schools.