A Study On The Integration Of Explicit And Implicit English Vocabulary Instruction In Junior High School

Vocabulary plays a dominant role in the process of English teaching and learning. Only by mastering vocabulary can the learning of listening, speaking,reading and writing be developed effectively.Different scholars hold different views on how to teach vocabulary,among them there are two representative methods: the explicit teaching method and the implicit teaching method. Sokmen(2002) considers that the vocabulary itself should be taken seriously, so teachers should teach vocabulary by explicit teaching method. However, Nagy(2002) advocates that vocabulary should be taught by implicit teaching method in context. And teachers should guide students to read extensively and to guess the meanings of words in the premise of knowing the main idea of passages. As each teaching method has its own advantages and disadvantages, the best way is to integrate the two methods to teach vocabulary. As Nation(2003) states, there is a place for both direct(explicit) and indirect(implicit) vocabulary learning.Many researches have been done to find out whether integrative teaching method has effects on students' vocabulary learning, but the subjects of researches are mainly college students.As the vocabulary is also essential in junior high school students' English learning, it is necessary to do such a research. The research aims at finding out a more suitable way for teachers to teach vocabulary in order to improve the students' English scores. Based on the theory of Interface Position, the study attempts to explore the following questions:(1) What effects do the explicit instruction have on junior high school students' vocabulary learning?(2) What effects do the integration of explicit and implicit instruction have on junior high school students' vocabulary learning?The participants of the study are junior middle school students of two classes, and there are 40 students in each class. One class is designed as the controlled class which is taught by the explicit teaching method, and teachers teach vocabulary directly. The other class is designed as the integration of explicit and implicit group, which is known as the experimental class. In the experimental class, the teacher not only provide contexts for students to guess words by knowing the main idea of passages, but also teach words directly.After three months' experiment, a post-test was given to students of experimental class and controlled class. And then six students of the experimental class were selected to have an interview.After the collection and analysis of data, the answers were as follows:(1) The explicit teaching method can help students memorize vocabulary.(2) The integration of explicit and implicit teaching method can not only help the students memorize vocabulary, but also help them use vocabulary.In brief, the integrative vocabulary teaching method is effective to junior high school students' vocabulary learning, so teachers should take advantage of this method when teaching vocabulary.