The Application Of English Songs To English Vocabulary Teaching Among Grade Seven Students At Junior Middle Schools In Rural Areas

The junior high school English syllabus(trial version)was published by Education Department of China in 2002.As it said,teachers should cultivate students' positive attitude towards learning English,and take practical measures to change the students' cognitive thinking of learning English.Only in this way,students will be able to appreciate its unique charms in the process of learning English and improve their English skills to meet the needs of communication.In the vocabulary learning,we find most students aren't able to fully grasp one thousand words,two hundred idioms and phrases which are required to be grasped in junior high school stage.At the same time,they don't know the 100 to 400 extra-curricular words.Most students can not read and write the words correctly,not to mention their meanings or flexibly using them.According to the author's analysis,the emergence of these events is not an accident,but a phenomenon.The cause is that students have learned vocabulary in a long boring learning environment,leading to the loss of interest in learning vocabulary.The vocabulary is an important factor in learning a language.So teachers,who want to improve students' English learning ability,are necessary to explore effective teaching methods to make students to master the vocabulary in a highly effective way.The author finds that most students are interested in foreign pop stars and English songs.They can quickly sing the songs and remember their lyrics.But when they face to their textbooks,the words are difficult to be remembered.Songs consist of both poems and music.It is "the language of mankind" and it can serve as a bridge to connect man with man.On the expressions of the meanings,music and language have many similar ways.Both their sounds' structures are also similar.Listening and singing songs can stimulate the right brain,causing the right brain highly exciting,and help memorize.Also,as the famous psychologist Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences mentioned,one of the eight human intelligences is musical intelligence,so we can combine learning and music creatively.Generally,English songs tell stories and express feelings.The song lyrics and clear rhythms not only give people a physical and mental sense of pleasure,and also contain a large number of foreign cultures and the usages of words,so students can learn English as well as fun.Therefore,this study aims to explore the application of English songs in English vocabulary teaching.In this study,the author regarded 80 students of Grade Seven as the research objects.They were from two different classes(each class,40 students)in Xiaoling Junior High School.Based on the Vocabulary Learning Situations Questionnaire by Jo Rensis Likert&Guo Jianhua(2010),the author surveyed the 80 students.The purpose was to know the vocabulary learning situations of Grade Seven students at junior high schools in rural areas.The Interest of Vocabulary Learning Questionnaire was adapted from the questionnaire of Zhou Yu kun(2012).Thanks to the questionnaire,the author surveyed the 40 students in the experimental class.The aim was to know their interest's changes before and after the experiment.Before and after the experiment,all the 80 students were asked to take the pre-test and post-test in vocabulary.The scores of post-test were divided into high scores,average scores and low scores.According to the post-test scores,the author chose 3 students from experimental class in each kind of scores.In order to further know whether English songs can enlarge vocabulary and improve students' interest in vocabulary learning,the author interviewed the 9 students.With the help of SPSS,the writer gets the following main findings:(1)The vocabulary learning conditions of students in Grade Seven.Based on the data analysis of the experimental class and the control class,the author finds that the vocabulary learning situation of the students in rural junior middle school is:Vocabulary learning is the greatest difficulty in leaning English.English teachers supervise students to remember vocabulary through dictation.Students also spend at least half an hour memorizing it every day.But because of the mechanical memory,remembered vocabulary is easy to be forgotten.The difficulties of learning vocabulary are to grasp its sound,spelling and meaning.The lack of vocabulary has obstructed students' listening,speaking,reading and writing.Anyway,all students hope to learn vocabulary well and try their best to find a good way to learn it well.(2)English songs can improve students' interest in learning vocabulary.After comparing and analyzing the questionnaires,the author finds that the students' interest in vocabulary learning is greatly improved after a term of teaching vocabulary with English songs.And almost all students think that English songs can activate classroom atmosphere,create a relaxing and pleasant learning environment.(3)English songs can help students master the vocabulary,expand vocabulary.After comparing and analyzing the results,the vocabulary of the experimental class is significantly higher than that of the control class.English songs can not only help students more firmly grasp the vocabulary without consciousness,but also expand the vocabulary of students.Because of the author's time,energy and abilities are limited,the paper still has some imperfections.I will continue studying the vocabulary teaching and hope to avoid shortages in the future researches.