Research On The Application Of Schema Theory To English Vocabulary Teaching In A Secondary Vocational School

Vocabulary,as one of the three basic elements of a language,is the foundation of language learning.Vocabulary teaching plays an important role in English learning in secondary vocational school.However,it has not received enough attention in actual teaching.The effect of vocabulary teaching is far from satisfying.The poor vocabulary has already been the biggest obstacle of students’ English learning in secondary vocational school.The extreme lack of vocabulary has seriously affected their development of English listening,speaking,reading and writing skills,which has also greatly influenced their interest and confidence in English learning.Schema is an internal structure in people’s mind that people perceive the world and represent information.Schema theory emphasizes the role of people’s existing knowledge structure,prior knowledge and experience in one’s mind when perceiving and understanding new things.Schema-based vocabulary teaching explores the process of language learning from a cognitive perspective,which gives emphasis to activating and enriching students’ existing knowledge structure(namely schemata),helps students to construct a schematic network of English vocabulary by some scientific methods,thus enables students to learn vocabulary more effectively.The research mainly addresses the following two questions: 1.How can teachers help students to construct English vocabulary schemata by schema-based vocabulary teaching approach? 2.On what aspects can the application of schema-based vocabulary teaching improve students’ vocabulary learning?After reading some relevant literature,and having a better understanding of schema theory and vocabulary teaching,the author suggested some scientific and feasible vocabulary teaching methods based on schema theory.The author used the methods of questionnaires,interviews and tests to conduct an experiment which lasted a semester.The author collected relevant data and information by pre-test questionnaire,teachers’ interview,pre-test,post-test,post-test questionnaire and students’ interview.Then,the author analyzed the data with SPSS19.0 and Microsoft Excel.All of these aim at verifying the effectiveness of schema-based English vocabulary teaching.The research has drawn two conclusions: 1.The teachers can use some teachingmethods such as introducing pronunciation rules and word formation knowledge,brainstorming,semantic mapping,using visual ways,context,aided with students’ e-dictionaries and vocabulary learning Apps,to help them relate vocabulary features to students’ prior schemata and build new English vocabulary schemata,thus improve students’ vocabulary learning effects.2.Schema-based vocabulary teaching can change students’ vocabulary learning methods as well as improve their vocabulary competence.On one hand,some scientific vocabulary learning methods are used in students’ vocabulary learning,nearly half of students have taken advantages of pronunciation rules and knowledge of word formation instead of rote citing and Chinese pinyin while learning the pronunciation and spelling of vocabulary.48.5% of students have also learnt word collocations and usages while learning a new word,which has a improvement of 20.2%.42.8% of students have learnt word guessing,with an increase of 11.4%;besides,the proportion of students who memorize words with the help of association and classification occupied about 40%.On the other hand,students’ vocabulary scores have improved a lot.Students’ vocabulary scores increased from31.14 points to 36.23 points,which are 4.058 points higher than those of the controlled class;besides,the distributions of vocabulary scores have also changed for the better.The proportion of Poor group decreases from17.1% to2.9%,only one student left;the percentage of Middle group drops from 34.3% to 22.9%,and that of Excellent groups goes up to 37.1% from 20%,finally the Good and Excellent groups rise highly to 74.2%in all.In conclusion,schema-based vocabulary teaching approach is proved to be effective on vocabulary teaching in secondary vocational school.It is hoped that the present study will bring some inspiration to English teachers in secondary vocational schools.Of course,the limitations of this research are to be solved in further research.