A Study On Vocabulary Exercise Design In Senior English Coursebooks

Great changes have taken place in the coursebook of SEFC2003 guided by the New Standards which is published in 2001,with vocabulary increased,exercises/tasks improved,and task-based teaching approach implemented.However,some students feel vocabulary learning is time-consuming and frustrating.As we know coursebooks play an important role in the field of FLT,and the exercise part is the essential of the whole coursebook.The quality of coursebook,depends to a large extent,on that of the exercise(Xia Jimei,2003).Furthermore,exercises provide students different contexts to encounter the new word which ensures a real mental work.Therefore,the writer starts this study aiming to find out the features of the coursebook,such as the set-up of vocabulary exercise in SEFC2003,the pedagogical theory embedded in the vocabulary exercise,and the present problems in using the coursebook,so as to find a way to use the coursebook efficiently to enhance vocabulary teaching in high school.First,the writer reviewed the theories of material evaluation as well as researches on vocabulary exercises.Then based on that,descriptive analysis method is adopted to analyze the coursebooks.During the first stage,a statistic information is collected by analyzing the coursebook.Then the second stage sees that a survey is made among teachers and students by a questionnaire.The data is analyzed and evaluated according to certain criteria.After analyzing,the writer found:context meaning is emphasized when designing the exercises;the exercises are graded from easy to difficult,with a variety format;the topics of exercises are close to real life;culture awareness and learning strategies are included;but production exercises are much more than decision-making exercises.Subsequent to the findings,the researcher pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of the coursebooks SEFC2003 in vocabulary exercises design.It should be pointed out that the analysis of vocabulary exercises in coursebooks is still at an initial stage,so the methodology remains to be improved in future research.