Vocabulary Acquisition In A Listening And Speaking Task-based Clt Class

Vocabulary is one of the most active elements of language. So vocabulary acquisition has been arousing interest of language teachers and linguists in the field of ESL acquisition and EFL acquisition.Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been introduced into China for decades, but it is mostly treated as an effective approach to oral teaching and learning. Few studies have conducted empirical experiments on CLT and Task-based language teaching and learning in association with vocabulary acquisition. The experiment of this thesis is a demonstration of vocabulary acquisition in a listening and speaking task-based CLT class.The subjects of the experiment are the 66 second grade first semester students of Jiangnan University, who are majoring International Trade. Various instruments are used in the pretest and posttest of the experiment to probe into research questions as follows:1) Can college EFL learners acquire vocabulary in a listening and speaking task-based CLT class? 2) Can college EFL learners grasp vocabulary in listening and speaking task-based CLT class as well as (or even better than) they do in a traditional reading task-based grammar-translation class? 3) In teaching and learning vocabulary, is it feasible to replace partly or completely the traditional grammar-translation method with listening and speaking task-based CLT?After analyzing the experiment data through SPSS, the following conclusions were drawn:1) College EFL learners can acquire vocabulary in a listening and speaking task-based CLT class equally well as they can in a traditional reading task-based grammar-translation class.2) College EFL learners are more willing and ready to use the newly acquired words in listening and speaking task-based CLT class. 3) In teaching and learning vocabulary, it is unwise to replace completely the traditional grammar-translation class with a listening and speaking task-based CLT class. The latter can be treated as a good alternative and supplement to the former.