Investigation And Analysis On Senior High-school English Vocabulary Teaching And Acquisition

The title of this thesis originates from the National Social Science Key Projectundertaken by Professor Yang Min “Investigation on Present Situation of ChineseEnglish Education”. It aims to find the problems in English vocabulary teaching andstudents’ puzzles in senior middle schools. It also provides detailed first-hand data forfurther study. Learning vocabulary well is a necessary condition for learning English,so the importance of vocabulary teaching in the entire process is self-evident.Meanwhile, senior high-school period forms a connecting link between the precedingand the following in the individual entire education. With the implementation of thenew English Curriculum Standards, English teaching ideas, contents and methodshave been changing in different degrees and the changes in vocabulary is particularlyprominent. Vocabulary learning lays more emphasis on communication, flexibilityand practicality to keep pace with the development of the times and social life. Incontrast with the requirement of the times, there exist some undeveloped factors inEnglish vocabulary teaching. Some teachers’ knowledge and teaching methods needto be updated; meanwhile some students can only study in a simple and boring way. Ifthe mechanical operation continues, interest and enthusiasm of students will begradually reduced, the efficiency of the classroom will be affected and even weakenthe overall teaching effect. This is perhaps the situation of many senior high-schoolsface, upon which there are factors of students’ basis and teaching management, butour attention is focused on the problems during the teaching process.This research mainly involves the following several aspects:(1) I would like toget a general understanding of the fundamental state of vocabulary learning andstudents’ mastery in the senior high-school.(2) From the learner’s perspective, therelationship between the vocabulary ability and students’ overall level will beanalyzed.(3) From the perspective of current teaching material, the features are to bediscovered in word distribution of each book and its input form.(4) The relation is tobe examined between lexical ability and vocabulary quantity to find out thedifferences between the requirement of the new curriculum for senior high-school students and their actual degree.(5) From the teacher’s point of view, I would like tofind out the ways of vocabulary input in class and the limitation of input range. Withthese questions in mind, the author carried out some research with senior-one studentsfrom Huangshan High School of Zouping County, among whom two classes acted asthe main research object. The data got from a questionnaire survey, testing andinterviews were put into the computer, and then a careful statistical analysis was doneusing the SPSS software. After that, by exchanging ideas with the teachers andstudents as well as observing some teachers’ classroom vocabulary teaching, theauthor was devoted to discover the underlying cause of their confusion and somepossible solutions.Through the investigation on the teachers’ vocabulary teaching and students’acquisition, the author has drawn some conclusions:(1) Both teachers and studentsare aware of the importance of vocabulary teaching and learning, while students havemany puzzles in phonetics and understanding meaning of words because of theirmechanical memory method, their problem-solving skills to be improved.(2)Teachers pay more attention to teaching vocabulary knowledge, but neglect thestudying methods and strategies as well as students’ receptive ability.(3) Englishoverall ability is positively related to high-school students’ lexical ability andvocabulary quantity.(4) Vocabulary input of the current textbooks is not quiteadequate systematically, having certain disparity with the curriculum requirements.(5)Most teachers are aware of the bad effect the traditional vocabulary teaching methodsimposed on students’ interest, trying to explore more effective ways to improveteaching efficiency.The author puts forward some constructive suggestions on problems above,hoping to arouse the interest of students through a variety of techniques and flexiblemethods. Some knowledge can be systematically summarized and presented spatially,humanistic ideas are transmitted to broaden their cultural background knowledge sothat vocabulary teaching can be improved partially or to a greater extent thoroughly.Furthermore, it is hoped that students will select suitable methods for their learningand memory, thus laying a solid foundation for their further study. Due to the practical conditions and the capacity of my ability, there must be many limitations andshortcomings in this thesis, but exploration is our constant pursuit and dream.