Action Research On Whether Theme Vocabulary Teaching Can Promote English Writing

Traditional vocabulary teaching involves word learning by reading aloud, recitation, dictation and other exercises, stressing word memorization rather than using words in contexts for certain communicative purpose and on certain themes. Students’ weakness in using vocabulary leads to their inability to write compositions effectively. From the perspectives of communicative language teaching and the concept of semantic network, the researcher conceived of a theme-based approach to teaching vocabulary, which is to organize vocabulary teaching and learning according to particular themes or topics, and optimize the opportunities for students to receive the input and to produce the output of these theme-based words, which allows students have quick access to the theme-related words and use them in communication properly. To test my hypothesis, I carried out an action research.Module5of Advance with English and21st century were used as the textbooks, according to which8themes were identified:friendship, environmental pollution and protection, the advantages and disadvantages of scientific development, the search for happiness, cultural differences, the effects of the Internet and whether it is good or not to study abroad. With the themes having been identified, the researcher worked out major teaching methods and strategies such as combining theme vocabulary teaching with the interpretation of the text (present before reading, highlight while reading, and reproduce after reading) and combining theme vocabulary teaching with language output (choose according to the context and utilize in the discourse).The action research lasted half a term (about10weeks) with students from one of my classes as experimental class, and the other one as the contrast class. In the research, the contrast class was generally taught in the traditional way while in the experimental class theme vocabulary teaching method was applied.On the basis of a careful and detailed research design and a scientific data analysis, the following conclusions have been achieved:1. Regarding English writing ability, the writing test results show that the experimental class outperformed the contrast class. The effect of theme vocabulary teaching is also found in the individual case study of some middle-level students, who, through theme vocabulary teaching, wrote much better.2. As far as the students’ affect and learning strategies, the interview results show that the students of the experimental class admit that their learning motivation, interest and confidence have been greatly improved; and they have developed the strategies of learning vocabulary as well.