A Study On The Application Of Communicative Approach To English Vocabulary Teaching In Junior High School

As we know, vocabulary is one of the three basic elements(pronunciation,grammar and vocabulary) of English. Vocabulary plays an important role in English study. Lack of enough vocabulary, we can’t communicate with others effectively in English. However, after researching the present situation of English vocabulary learning, the author finds that there are several problems existing in English vocabulary learning in junior high school. Most of students don’t like recite English vocabulary and lack of effective English vocabulary learning strategies. Although some students spend lots of time reciting vocabulary, they are easy to forget them. So the teachers are faced with serious challenge of how to stimulate student’s interest in English learning and help students to form effective learning vocabulary strategies.This paper aims to apply the Communicative Approach to vocabulary teaching to solve these problems.When studying the application of the Communicative Approach in junior high school vocabulary teaching, it aims to answer the following questions:1. Can CA enhance students’ intrinsic motivation to English learning?2. Can CA make a positive influence on vocabulary learning strategies?3. Can CA enable junior high students to master their vocabulary better than traditional teaching method?This experiment is conducted in two classes in Linghai NO.1 junior High School.The experiment which lasts four months has 98 participants. The communicative Approach is applied in the experimental class(EC) and the traditional method is adopted in the control class(CC). Before the experiment, the questionnaire was handed out to each student in EC to get general information about students’ intrinsic motivation of English learning and their current vocabulary learning strategy. In addition, there is a pre-vocabulary test to students in both classes. During the experiment, CA is applied in experimental class, while traditional method is still used as usual to teach English vocabulary in the control class. After the experiment, the same questionnaire is given to the experimental class to explore the changes in students’ attitudes and strategies towards vocabulary learning. What’s more, the post-vocabulary test is given to both classes to prove the effectiveness of communicative vocabulary teaching method. Through the collection and analysis of data, the results show that CA can enhance students’ intrinsic motivation to English learning and strategy towards English vocabulary learning and improve students’ vocabulary proficiency.