A Case Study On Vocabulary Teaching Strategies Of Senior High School English Teachers

Vocabulary is the foundation of English learning. In terms of vocabulary learning, whatis required by the new English Curriculum Standard of Senior High School is not only thequantity of the vocabulary, but also the accuracy and flexibility of using it, which is a greatchallenge to the current English vocabulary teaching in senior high schools. For a long time,there have been many problems in senior high school vocabulary teaching, such as teachers’simplistic teaching methods, students’ lack of strategy instruction, students’ low learningefficiency and so on. Based on the real situation of classroom vocabulary teaching, this studytries to explore the issues associated with the strategies of teaching English vocabulary insenior high schools.The author tries her best to sort out the researches on vocabulary teaching both at homeand abroad. The theories in this study are mainly taken from the researches of two linguists,Nation and Ur. The author chooses three senior high school English teachers of Grade One asparticipants. Each of the teachers has three classes recorded. And there are all together ninerecordings and transcripts. According to the analysis of the transcripts, the author seeks toanswer the following questions:1. What aspects of vocabulary do the three teachers focus on?2. What kinds of strategies do they use in vocabulary teaching?3. Do they adopt differentstrategies or emphasize different aspects of vocabulary in the process of teaching?4. Arethere any insufficiencies about the vocabulary teaching of the three teachers?The results of this study show that: Firstly, all the three teachers focused on “meaning”and “use” of the vocabulary in their teaching, but they rarely mentioned the connotations ofthe vocabulary. As to the teaching of “meaning”, they tended to give the Chineseexplanations directly. Secondly, among all the vocabulary teaching strategies, the threeteachers used the presenting strategies most frequently, however, they employed fewtechniques to train their students how to grasp the strategies. Thirdly, all the three teachersdid not pay much attention to training the students’ fluency of using vocabulary. They especially pay little attention to training students’ listening skills. The results of this studywill help the teachers to realize the problems in their own teaching and thus be very useful infinding the main causes of these problems and eventually help them to improve their teachingmethods and increase the efficiency of teaching.