A Study Of English Vocabulary Teaching Under The Guidance Of New Curriculum Standards:Problems And Solutions

Vocabulary is one of the cores of language abilities in communication. As the main means to master vocabulary, the importance of vocabulary teaching is self-evident. In view of the significance of vocabulary to English study, China’s Ministry of Education raises a higher demand in vocabulary teaching in New English Curriculum Standards of Senior High School. On the one hand, New English Curriculum Standards demands that students master an increasing number of vocabulary; on the other hand, it advocates learning vocabulary from the angle of everyday using. Therefore, vocabulary teaching should not only enlarge the students’vocabulary, but also enable the students to use the vocabulary to communicate on the basis of recognition, memorization and comprehension. On the whole, the present vocabulary teaching in senior high school is that teachers always use the vocabulary that students can’t recognize, teach students of different levels in the same way and leave the task of how to learn to the students without offering any guidance to vocabulary study. As a result, vocabulary teaching is mostly isolated and separated from the context. And there also exists the problem of ignoring the practical use of vocabulary. In order to adapt to the requirement of the New English Curriculum Standards of Senior High School, some traditional teaching methods must be improved. This is both vital to carry out the new concept of New English Curriculum and necessary to push ahead English vocabulary teaching. What’s more, it can help solve the students’vocabulary problems.In view of this, this thesis, under the guidance of the theory of constructivism, explores the problems of English vocabulary teaching under the guidance of New English Curriculum Standards and their solutions. The thesis firstly reviews the current research of vocabulary teaching in China, analyzes the factors that influence vocabulary teaching. It also does a research and analysis about the present situation of vocabulary teaching by means of questionnaire survey, interview and class observation. Then it examines the problems existing in senior high school vocabulary teaching and their causes, and puts forward some practical principles and solutions to these problems.The thesis consists of seven chapters. Chapter one is an introduction to the background and significance of the present study. Chapter two is literature review about the current vocabulary teaching research, vocabulary study problems and solutions in Chinese senior high school. It also presents the vocabulary teaching principles, strategies and methods used in Chinese senior high school. Chapter three is the theoretical framework, which introduces the related theory about the theory of constructivism. Chapter four is a research and analysis about the current vocabulary teaching in senior high school. Chapter five is about the problems existing in senior high school vocabulary teaching and their causes, which include the students’ lack of study motivation, not being able to memorize the vocabulary, not being able to use the vocabulary proficiently and not knowing the vocabulary learning strategies and methods. These problems are caused by the gap between the teachers’ teaching concept and the requirements of teaching transformation as well as the simplification of their teaching strategies and methods. Chapter six offers the principles and solutions to the vocabulary teaching problems. In the author’s opinion, the principles that we should stick to are:combining the vocabulary teaching with the students’ practical use of language, strengthening the connections between vocabulary teaching and other language factors, laying a solid vocabulary foundation and focusing on the variation of teaching methods. Therefore, the strategies on improving vocabulary teaching are as follows:teachers pay special attention to pronunciation and context, arrange different teaching contents in different teaching periods, offer guidance to students and instruct the students to collect and assort the words that are easy to forget and misspell. Chapter seven is the conclusion, making a summary of the whole thesis, pointing out its features and defects, and proposing suggestions for further research.