Main Problems And Solutions In Vocabulary Teaching And Learning In Secondary Vocational Schools

Vocabulary is the basis of understanding and using a language, and English vocabulary teaching plays an important role in improving the students'listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, but the lack of vocabulary is always a major factor that prevents students from raising their English level, and there is no exception in secondary vocational schools. However, up to now, most of the researches on English vocabulary teaching and learning were directed at high schools or colleges. The study of the English vocabulary teaching and learning in secondary vocational schools seems a bit inadequate.The significance of this thesis is that it tries to discover the main problems in the vocabulary teaching and learning in secondary vocational schools, and find the solutions to these problems on the basis of Geoffrey Leech's theory of"seven types of word meaning", some related theories of cognitive linguistics, and language learning strategy training model, then testifies whether the proposed solutions can improve the vocabulary performance of the students in secondary vocational schools by an experimentThe present thesis consists of six parts, including Introduction and Conclusion. The main body is made up of four chapters.The introduction first presents the definition of vocabulary, the role it plays in a language, and the importance of vocabulary teaching and learning. Next, the special demand for vocabulary teaching and learning and the particularities of the students in secondary vocational schools are discussed.The first chapter reviews the foreign and domestic studies of English vocabulary teaching and vocabulary learning strategies. All these studies have ever since been offering helpful guidelines for the vocabulary teaching and learning practice for language teachers and learners in China. However, most of these studies were directed at high schools and colleges and there have been few studies of the English vocabulary teaching and learning in secondary vocational schools.The second chapter of the thesis discusses the theoretical foundation of the study, they are: 1) Geoffrey Leech's theory of"seven types of word meaning"; 2) some related theories of cognitive linguistics: prototypes and categories, the formation of concept and conceptual structure, metaphors and schemas; 3) language learning strategy training model.In the third chapter, the writer first finds out that there exist two main problems in the English vocabulary teaching and learning in secondary vocational schools by means of interviewing and investigating. One problem is that the English teachers in secondary vocational schools lack in scientific vocabulary teaching methods, that is, they do not teach vocabulary in combination of word-formation knowledge, words'cultural connotations, hyponymy, context, collocation, synonymy and polysemy. The other problem is that the students in secondary vocational schools lack in efficient methods to learn vocabulary: they tend to memorize new words mechanically, mainly by rote. Then the writer discusses systematically how to solve these problems. In the...