An Action Research On Teaching Vocabulary To Improve English Reading Comprehension For Senior Three Students

The author first starts with the Senior Three students’ problems in vocabulary andreading and briefly looks into the problems by doing a small survey. At the moment,the test-oriented teachers and students do not pay due attention to vocabulary teachingand learning, which may be one of the reasons that has led to the students’ poorperformance in reading comprehension. After a review of the research literature, asmall-scale action research is conducted in two Senior Three classes, ShanghaiJianqing Experimental School. To test the hypothesis of the students’ problemsreflected in vocabulary and reading, a pre-test, an interview and a pre-questionnaireare conducted. The results show that the students’ problems mainly lie in vocabularylearning, revision and memorisation. Considering the limited time, the conditions andthe pedagogic theories concerning vocabulary teaching, associative strategies andcontextual approach are adopted in the ten-week action research. During the research,the author’s aim is to present the words more efficiently as well as facilitate students’use of the two methods in their vocabulary work. The brief teaching procedures arealso included in the thesis. A post-test and a post-questionnaire are applied to test theresults. The associative strategy and contextual approach are found to be beneficial inraising students’ ability and confidence when they learn and review English words.Owing to improved vocabulary acquisition, their performance in reading is alsoenhanced.The study is significant for two reasons. One is that few studies focus on thespecific vocabulary teaching methods to improve students’ reading comprehension inSenior Three. The other is that the action research reflects the teacher’s reflection,trial and the adaptation of the pedagogic theories to meet the needs of the students.The research procedure and the results might give inspiration to other teachers.