Application Of Task-based Approach In English Vocabulary Teaching And Learning Of Higher Vocational Schools

Vocabulary is the basis of understanding and making use of a language. Lexical competence is directly related with the ability of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. A person could not completely understand other people's words or completely express himself unless he has a certain command of vocabulary.Vocabulary is the basic unit of language, which is always considered by many linguists and language scholars as the center of language education. However, the students have get into the habit of memorizing vocabulary in a repeated mechanic way. Therefore, the result is unsatisfying in spite of the long time and energy they spend in it. They are at a loss especially when they are in real communicative situation. Even the students who have learned 8 years English still feel confused about how to learn vocabulary. Most of them are not contented with the small size of vocabulary and their embarrassment in using English in real communication.In order to enlarge students'vocabulary size and improve their communicative ability, the writer proposes that Task-based Approach is an effective way.Task-based Approach is the development of communicative teaching method, which put the teaching aim into activities. Task-based Approach emphasizes"learning by doing"and is quite popular in western countries and in China. A task is an activity with particular aim in teaching process. In the process of doing tasks, learners can understand each other, use and interact with each other in the target language.This thesis first traces the development of task-based approach at home and abroad, and then introduces the major issues about task-based approach and vocabulary as theoretical foundations of Chapter Three. In order to find out the current situation on English vocabulary teaching and learning, the writer launched two questionnaires with 15 English teachers and 146 students respectively in Laiwu Vocational and Technical College. Based on the problems in teachers'teaching and students'learning, the introduction of task-based approach is suggested by the writer in English vocabulary classroom. They believe that the introduction of task-based approach can improve the effect of teachers'teaching and students'learning. The reasonableness and effectiveness of what the writer proposes was tested by an experiment in Laiwu Vocational and Technical College. The experiment lasted a semester, from September 1, 2010 to January 8, 2011. After 17 weeks'classroom experiment, data from the pre-test and post-test were collected. Then the data of the two tests are processed by SPSS 17.0 and the results show: the introduction of task-based approach in vocabulary teaching will certainly improve students'ability in mastering and making use of words, which proved the teachers'and students'proposals reasonable and effective. In the end, the thesis presents the teaching implications both for teachers and students, and the teaching materials, and then points out the limitations of the present study and suggestions for the future research.