An Empirical Research On The Application Of Narrative Approach In English Vocabulary Teaching At College

Vocabulary is the basis of language learning. In the process offoreign language learning, mastery of the vocabulary is an importantaspect of the entire language learning and teaching. This study detailedexpound the narrative approach based on cognitive psychological theoryand narrative approach, which can make non-English majors to use amore effective way to learning English.In this study, the researcher put forward three questions. Questionone: We want to know if narrative approach could improve students’long-lasting memories of the vocabulary. Question two: narrativeapproach could improve the English proficiency of non-English majorsand the scores. Not only that, the experimental class is actually better thanthe control class. Question three: whether the new approach can improvestudents’ status of English learning. This study lasted12weeks. Theexperimental subjects carried out in82students that come from Xi’anPeihua College. They are all sophomores majoring in civil engineering.There are three phases during the whole experiment. In the firstphase, the researcher attempts to refines the useful part of narrativeapproach used in foreign language teaching, which are the theoreticalsupport of this research. Actually, this theory couldpromote the development of lexical competence. The second phase wasto practice narrative approach in vocabulary teaching. The last phase was using statistical software SPSS19.0to analysis two classes of vocabularydictation tests, the CET4, and data of questionnaire.The following findings were revealed through the data. For the first,with employing the Narrative Approach, the non-English major subjectscan promote deep processing and enhance their long-term memory.Secondly, their English proficiency can be positively affected byNarrative Approach. The last, vocabulary learning can be improved.Finally, on the basis of the experimental results and the researchfindings, this study provides some feasible suggestions for vocabularylearning and suggesting for further studies are also pointed out.