Effects Of The English Picture Book Reading On Primary School Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition:An Empirical Study

This paper is an empirical study of the application of English picture book to the reading teaching in primary school.The experiment aims to investigate the effect of the application of picture book on primary school students’ reading ability. Currently, the research about English picture book are mainly concentrated on the effect of its application to English learners’ vocabulary acquisition, the number of research is small.Vocabulary acquisition, which has great influence on learners’ confidence of learning English, is one of the indicators on learners’ overall English proficiency. The related research about English picture book proved that English picture book have a significant influence in terms of enlarging learners’ vocabulary, improving their thoughts and the reading proficiency,at the same time facilitating learners’ language development.Properly utilize the English picture book in English reading in the primary school,follow the reading principles, which can effectively enlarge the learners’ vocabulary and enhancing their language proficiency.This study is intended to investigate the effect of application of English picture book on primary school students’ vocabulary acquisition, improve their learning confidence in learning English and explore an effectively way for primary school English teaching.Based on English picture book reading, the paper is intended to examine the following question:(1) What effects does the English picture book reading have on primary students’ vocabulary comprehension ?(2) What effects does the English picture book reading have on primary school students’ learning interest, habits and confidence based on the theory of vocabulary acquisition ?The teaching experiment is targeted at two parallel classes of Grade five in Hunan Mingde Lugu School. And this experiment lasted one semester. The experimental class applied the English picture book in their English reading teaching class, while the control class followed their usual routine. During the experiment, ways like investigation, classroom observation and test are used to collect data. In this semester, the two classes have under through three vocabulary comprehension tests to see the results, and the scores have been collected to go through further research.The empirical study find out that after the experiment, students of experimental class outperformed those from the control class in the vocabulary comprehension remarkably, due to the application of English picture book in reading. Another finding is that, students in experimental class has significant improvement in the interest, confidence and habits towards vocabulary learning after the experiment. However, the change inthe above three aspects is not so obvious in the control class. The experimental results prove that the application of the English picture book reading is an effective and efficient way to facilitate the primary school students’ vocabulary acquisition.Due to the limitation of the time and place, there are two main limitations in terms of experimental time and the reading material. The experimental, which lasts only three months, is relatively short and the reading material is not rich. To seek for a more precise conclusion, the future research can last longer and richer English picture book. However,the author still thinks that the experiment has its value theoretically and practically. which can offer implications to primary school English teaching in China.