A Study On The Lexical Approach To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior Middle Schools Of China

The past two decades have seen great changes in the field of foreign languageteaching and research. Firstly, the center of research is shifting from the traditionalteacher-centered teaching research to student-centered learning research, or whatmethod can help the students study autonomously and effectively is now in thespotlight. Secondly, the developments in language teaching have provided newperspectives for vocabulary teaching. It used to be thought of as an attachment inlanguage teaching and now it has attracted more and more attention. Thus there is ashift of focus from grammar to vocabulary and more and more research has beencarried out in vocabulary teaching. The emphasis on usages of a single word ismoving to the concern of the whole context of the word, esp. possible collocationswith the word and vocabulary learning strategies.According to the new curriculum issued by the Department of Education of ourcountry, a student is expected to master about 3500 words on graduation from thesenior middle school. It is nearly double the vocabulary in the old curriculum, whichdemanded a mastery of about 2000 words. The new aim, for teachers who were usedto teaching every word thoroughly and giving students repeated exercises, isundoubtedly a real challenge. The old vocabulary teaching methods can't adapt to thenew speed and the new requirements. Ever since the new teaching materials based onthe new curriculum were put into use, the teachers have been trying hard to teach therequired contents to the students and have no time to consider the students' needs. Theresult is that the students seem to have learned a lot of words and many words appearfamiliar to them but they don't know how to use them.This thesis, based on the new vocabulary teaching theory, seeks to investigate thepresent situation of vocabulary teaching since the issue of the new curriculum. Theinvestigation was thus designed to find out what senior middle school Englishteachers think of vocabulary teaching, what aspects of vocabulary they focus on andwhat vocabulary teaching methodology they adopt. It is found that since the adoptingof the new textbook based on the new curriculum, English teachers attach greatimportance to vocabulary teaching. But traditional vocabulary teaching concernsmainly over basic meanings of words and giving examples. In vocabulary teachingmethodology, teachers are used to helping their students to review vocabulary,unaware of new vocabulary acquisition strategies. Based on the situation, this thesiscasts doubt on the present ideas of vocabulary teaching, and puts forward constructivesuggestions concerning how to teach vocabulary with the guidance of the newvocabulary teaching theory so as to provide valuable reference for vocabularyteaching.This thesis is only an initial attempt in vocabulary teaching. To achieve the goalof the students mastering and effectively using vocabulary, continuous efforts andresearch from all teachers are needed. It is believed that more and more teachers willrealize the importance of vocabulary teaching and spare no effort to promote the levelof vocabulary teaching and research in our country, improve teaching methodologyand eventually improve the learners' ability to communicate successfully.