Vocabulary Teaching In Senior Middle School From Cooperative Learning Theory Perspective

Vocabulary learning is the basis of English learning. Just as Lewis (1993) stated, "Vocabulary acquisition is the centre of SLL, which plays the most important role." A large vocabulary will undoubtedly lays a solid foundation for the following English cognitive activities: listening , speaking, reading, writing and translation. Therefore it's of great importance to do researches on vocabulary teaching. Cooperative learning ,as a theoretic and strategic system, has been widely applied by many countries throughout the world and then has become a mainstream teaching theory and strategy for there has been an increasing consensus among researchers as to the positive effects of cooperative learning on progressing students' grades and improving social effective aspects. I am trying to combine cooperative learning theory with English vocabulary teaching in senior middle schools, aiming at exploring a new way to teach vocabulary effectively.In terms of practical vocabulary teaching, the thesis first provides my colleges and some students two questionnaires relating to English lexicon and English vocabulary teaching & learning .Then, the thesis presents the main problems which exist in senior middle schools as follows: first, both teachers and students are not well aware of the importance of vocabulary; second, they haven't placed sufficient emphasis on vocabulary teaching & learning; meanwhile, unemployment of scientific and effective methods or strategies surely results in relevant problems. It is generally considered, in their eyes, that whether to adopt scientific and effective methods will make little difference so long as our students practice a lot and naturally enable their English abilities improved. There is no doubt that they neglect the great significance of scientific and effective vocabulary teaching & learning methods.Targeted at the above problems in senior middle schools, this thesis probes into the vocabulary teaching methods combining with cooperative learning theory and at the same time come up with a series of vocabulary teaching model to demonstrate its satisfactory efficiency as a result of the analysis and assessment. The thesis also mentions that the solution to such problems depends on teachers who are to change the old ideas of English vocabulary teaching & learning, optimize their vocabulary teaching methods(for example, use cooperative learning theory in vocabulary teaching) and deliberately design vocabulary exercises as well as vocabulary tests. Based on making both qualitative & quantitative analyses, the writer draws a conclusion after a two-year investigation that it is an effective and feasible teaching strategy to use cooperative learning theory in vocabulary teaching though there seems to exist some inefficient problems.I sincerely hope that my thesis will benefit and enlighten those teachers who are working in senior middle schools to some extent and that more and more teachers as well as some researchers willingly focus on English vocabulary teaching in senior middle schools.