| Vocabulary is considered to be a vital component of writing, some scholars believe that the difficulties encountered by the students in writing are caused by the lack of productive vocabulary. Many researchers began to study the relationship between productive vocabulary and writing. However, most of the researches are concerning productive vocabulary acquisition, and the subjects of majority of the researches are university students, few involved secondary school students. Thus, the author attempted to develop middle school students’writing through the productive training of vocabulary.The thesis conducted an experimental study based on Output Hypothesis to explore whether the productive training of newly learned words can facilitate English writing of junior high school students, and the following two research questions are put forward in this thesis:1) Can productive training of newly learned words enhance the writing proficiency of junior high school students?2) Can productive training of newly learned words facilitate students’ employment of newly learned words in English writing?Two natural classes with similar English writing level in a high school were chosen to participate in the experiment. One was an experimental class and the other was a controlled one. Different vocabulary teaching method was applied to the two classes in the whole procedure of teaching. The new words were presented and explained in English. The characteristics, collocation and usage of the words were also introduced in class. It was followed that some exercises were given to the students to further understand the new words, such as multiple choice and fill in the blank. But after class, the students in the EC were required to write a composition by using newly learned words while the CC were asked to write a passage without the requirement of words employment. The experimental study lasted ten weeks. Pre-test, questionnaire, experiment, post-test and interviews were involved. The data of the pre-test and post-test were analyzed in Independent Sample Test (SPSS13.0) to figure out whether there is significant difference between these two classes. The data of questionnaires were calculated to answer the second question.The results of post-test showed that there was significant difference between the two classes in English writing proficiency, thus answered the first question:the productive training of newly learned words can improve students’ writing proficiency. The results of questionnaires which revealed the quantity of newly learned words employed by students answer the second question:the productive training of newly learned words can facilitate students’employment of newly learned words in English writing.The productive training of newly learned words enable students pay more attention to the usage, collocation and spelling of the words. The usage of words caught more attention from high-score students, and the collocation and spelling caught more attention from the moderate students and low-score students. It indicated that the spelling and collocation of a word should be attached more importance to in language teaching. According to the results of this experimental research, it can come to the conclusion that the productive training of newly learned words can facilitate students’writing proficiency and students’employment of newly learned words in their writing.Based on the findings above and the teaching activities implemented in the present study, we have the following pedagogical implications:the productive training of newly learned words should begin from the easier part, such as sentence writing, to engage moderate and low-score students in the training. To relate output with input, students should be required to review the usage and collocation of newly learned words before productive training. The productive training can be employed to speaking teaching as well, since many of learners’difficulties in utterance are caused by the lack of productive vocabulary. |
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