The Application Of STAD To Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

This study applies Students Team Achievement Division into Vocabulary Teaching in SeniorHigh School and certifies the effectiveness of enhancing students’ learning ability and interest inEnglish. Currently, traditional teaching mode in vocabulary teaching senior high school is stilldominant, causing undesirable phenomenon like “the teacher fully explains the vocabulary tostudents leaving no chance for students to cerebrate” and “rote memorization”, which reducesboth students’ interests in English and their academic achievements. English CurriculumStandards regards overall language ability as the general objective of English course in the basiceducation, advocating stimulating students’ interest in learning English and cultivating theirautonomous learning ability and cooperative ability. Throughout the research of scholars on theteaching of English vocabulary, it can be found that studies on vocabulary teaching mainly focuson the teacher-centered teaching strategies. Seldom studies combine vocabulary teaching withcooperative learning theory. Furthermore, the studies on cooperative learning mainly lies inEnglish reading, writing, oral teaching, rarely setting in the area of vocabulary teaching. Theinnovation of this study is combining the Students Team Achievement Division (STAD) withvocabulary teaching in senior high school to change the traditional teacher-centered vocabularyteaching mode and enable the students participating in learning vocabulary independently;besides, specific cooperative learning mode--Students Team Achievement Division (STAD) isapplied in practice.This study aims to testify the effectiveness of Students Team Achievement Division (STAD),to change the current status quo of boring vocabulary learning and mechanical words reciting toimprove the abilities and interest of students learning English vocabulary.This study employs quantitative method and makes a four-month teaching experiment in asenior high school in Jinan. After the experiment, a questionnaire survey was taken by theparticipants in the experimental class. The participants are123students in Grade10. Class19isthe experimental class and class20is the control class. The only variable in this experiment isthat cooperative method STAD was used in teaching vocabulary in Class19where students workin a group to achieve a common goal. While in Class20, students study in a traditional way as usual. Pre-test and post-test are taken by the two classes before and after the experiment. Theresearch data collected are analyzed by SPSS. Research data implicates that after the experiment,the students in the experimental class are better at vocabulary memorizing and using than thosein the control class. Therefore, Students Team Achievement Division (STAD) is effective invocabulary teaching to improve students’ learning abilities and arouse their interest.This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one is the literature review, mainly giving areview of the related researches on vocabulary teaching and Students Team AchievementDivision at home and abroad. Chapter two introduces the theoretical foundations of StudentsTeam Achievement Division, including cooperative learning, social interdependence theory,motivational theory, developmental theory and cognitive elaboration. In chapter three, itintroduces the researching methodology including the research questions, subjects, andinstruments and describes the implementation of the research in detail. Chapter four discussesthe results of the tests and the questionnaire employed in this research using SPSS. The dataanalysis shows that the post-test scores of the experimental class are higher than those of thecontrol class and students in the experimental class have changed their attitude to English. InChapter five, major findings and pedagogical implications of the research are discussed and thelimitations and suggestions of further research are presented.The results show that Students Team Achievement Division (STAD) cooperative learningcreates a more relaxing, interesting and motivational learning atmosphere in which students canlearn English without the direct supervise of the teacher and without too much pressure; thatteaching vocabulary in a cooperative way is effective to improve students’ vocabulary learning,the development of overall language ability, cooperative ability and autonomous learning ability;the gap between the struggling students and students who are good at English is narrowed, andthe struggling students make a great progress with the help of their group members.Based on the research, four implications for vocabulary teaching in senior high school areproposed. First, traditional teaching method should be combined with cooperative learningmethod. Second, great emphasis should be placed on students’ learning ability and social skills.Third, teachers should change their roles in class from dictators to instructors. Last, whenapplying cooperative learning into practice, many elements should be taken into account toadjust teaching strategy according to different situations. This study confirms the assumptions of the author and achieves the intended purpose.However, there are still several inadequacies in the experimental method and process which needto be further enhanced and improved.