A Study On The Application Of Narrative Approach To English Vocabulary Teaching In Junior High School

Vocabulary teaching is an indispensable part of ESL teaching.However,most learners still know the way they used rote memorization or mechanical memory when they learn English vocabulary.Therefore,the new teaching method which is more in line with the cognitive characteristics of the learners is urge ntly needed to improve the solution of this problem.Starting from the learning characteristics of junior middle school students,the current situation of English Vocabulary Teaching in China,and the requirements of new curriculum standard for English vocabulary,based on narrative theory,the researcher puts forward the way of applying narrative to junior middle school English vocabulary teaching.Narrative approach is a new attempt on English language teaching.It gives a teaching process designed for a specific language item,such as vocabulary,sentence patterns,paragraphs,chapters,etc.,which can be designed and presented in a narrative way.The use of narrative approach can create real situations,learners can also create real context through their own narrative,give full play to the psychological emotion,imagination and creation ability,and ultimately in the cognitive activities combined with the reality of language acquisition.The narrative approach is a method that contains many teaching skills.It integrates the three groups of approach,method and technique.In order to test the role of narrative approach in junior high school English vocabulary teaching,the author carried out a teaching experiment.The results of the experiment will answe r the following two research questions:(1)Can the application of narrative approach to English vocabulary teaching improve students' vocabulary knowledge?(2)Can the application of narrative approach change the attitudes of Junior high school students to English vocabulary learning? The author chose two parallel classes for comparison.79 Junior high school students who came from two classes of grade eight in Minxian County Xizhai Junior High School in Gansu Province were selected as the research subjects.The experimental class adopted the narrative approach,and the conventional teaching method was used in the control class.Both classes took the same pre-test(the Final English Examination for the second semester of Grade 7)before the experiment.After nearly 2-month experiment to the same subjects.Besides,the author made a survey of students in both the experimental class and the control class a questionnaire before the experiment.And after the experiment,the researcher chose ten students at different learning levels as interviewees to do an interview.Finally,SPSS 19.0 was used to analyze the data collected from the experiment.The experimental results show that there is no significant difference in vocabulary ability and comprehensive ability between the two classes before the experiment,but there are significant differences after the experiment.The experimental class students who used the narrative approach are tend to be more interested in vocabulary learning and more active in English vocabulary learning.From the results of the study,the application of narrative approach is effective to improve the junior high school students' English vocabulary knowledge.This study also helps to improve the teaching of English vocabulary in junior high school.At the same time,the suggestions for further researches are also given.The author applied the narrative approach to junior high school English vocabulary teaching,it was only an attempt,to a certain extent,it has some originality.However,because of the limited selection of experimental objects and limited time of experiment,there are some limitations in this study.