Vocabulary Teaching In Oxford English (Shanghai Edition) For Senior High School Students

The so-called “dumb English” and “deaf English” are overwhelming in the fieldof English education in our country. With the demand of the city’s development forinternational talents continuously increasing, there is an increasingly popular demandfor high school graduates to be able to communicate in general English so that it canbe a basis for the professional English learning in university. Vocabulary takes adecisive position in English communication, which makes it a high-value researchfield to have a study of what vocabulary are necessary for high school students tomake general English communication. Many experts and learners have doneresearches on the vocabulary necessary for communication in general English,whether from the view of the quantity or the choice of words. These researches,however, are not for the high school students in our country, most of which put focuson the whole vocabulary rather than nouns, even a certain group of nouns. Be that asit may, their research findings lay the foundation for this study.This study mainly includes three parts: the presentation of “referential nouns”,the analysis of the referential nouns in the Oxford English (Shanghai Edition) for highschool students and the supplement of referential nouns in Oxford English for highschool students. In this research, we first try to define the “referential nouns” on thebasis of the literature searches and the inspiration from my instructor, describe thegrammatical features, semantic features and the features in other aspects of them, andresearch the roles of the referential nouns in general English communication from theview of their functions, frequency, etc. to prove the referential nouns play a greatlyimportant role in the English communication, so it is necessary for high schoolstudents to learn as many referential nouns as possible to help them makecommunication in English. Then, English is learnt as a foreign language in highschools, so teaching materials have a decisive role in students’ language input. Weattempt to analyze the referential nouns in Oxford English for high school studentsboth in quantity and quality in this study. Mainly through the horizontal andlongitudinal comparisons of the number of the referential nouns in the textbooks, the quantity analysis is to prove whether the number matches students’ cognitivecompetence and communicative needs and the quality analysis is to decide whetherthe referential nous meet the needs of the students’ communication, throughhorizontal and longitudinal comparisons as well. Based on the quantity and qualityanalyses of the referential nouns in the textbooks, we make an attempt to develop aspecific supplementary vocabulary list of referential nouns for the high schoolstudents taking Oxford English as their textbooks to have a supplement of referentialnouns so that they can make better communication in English. The research ofdeveloping the list can be divided into the decision of quantity and the choices ofvocabulary which are both based on the degree of the cognitive competencedevelopment and the needs of general English communication of the high schoolstudents in Shanghai and the results are concluded through the comparisons with othermaterials, the counting of data and comprehensive analyses.