An Experimental Study Of Corpus-based English Teaching Model For English Synonyms In Senior High Schools

Corpus opens up a new direction for language research and language teaching for its rich corpus resources and advanced retrieval software.Synonyms learning is a very important part in senior high school English vocabulary teaching whereas most of the students still fail to grasp synonyms skillfully after spending a lot of time.Synonyms often confuse them especially in the cloze test and composition.This paper focuses on exploring the feasibility of a teaching model based on corpus for English synonyms,and attempts to provide enlightenments for further improving the effect of English synonyms teaching in high schools.The author did an experimental study by using Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA)in the teaching of English synonyms,trying to analyze and help students to learn synonyms from three aspects: frequency,collocation and semantic prosody.Ninety students,taught by the author,from two classes(45 from each)of Grade 2 in senior high school from Penglai of Shandong Province were chosen as participants,with one class being the experimental class while the other being the controlled class.The study lasted for 10 weeks.In the experimental class,the corpus-based teaching model for English synonyms was used,while in the controlled class,the traditional teaching method was still adopted.The research questions of this study are:(1)Compared with the traditional method,is the corpus-based teaching model for English synonyms more effective in helping students command the English synonyms?(2)Compared with the traditional method,can the corpus-based teaching model for English synonyms better promote students' participation and learning interest? The main findings are as follows:(1)The scores of the two classes after the experiment seemed to have increased separately.To be specific,the average score of the controlled class increased by 8.37 points while the experimental class increased by 11.4 points.This might indicate that compared with the traditional teaching method,the corpus-based teaching model for English synonyms,to a large extent,could better improve the students' learning effects of English synonyms.(2)Compared with traditional teaching method for synonyms,the corpus-based teaching model for English synonyms could better promote students' classroom participation,arouse their enthusiasm,and stimulate their interest in learning.According to the results of the questionnaire and the author's class observation,over 80% of the students showed great enthusiasm for this teaching model,indicating that the corpus-based teaching model for English synonyms could not only exert the students' learning initiative,but also help to foster students' autonomous learning ability.This study may imply that,to a certain extent,the corpus-based English teaching model,both effective and feasible,is of great help for English teaching and learning in senior high schools.