OnVocabularyTeachingPractice

1、On Vocabulary Teaching PracticeAbstract： As is widely known, vocabulary, the building material, is essential to a language. Vocabulary knowledge is a primary predictor of reading comprehension. Without vocabulary learning, many other skills of learning language will not come true. This paper is base

2、d on my teaching practice according to the principle of students?centered and explored several feasible approaches to vocabulary teaching.Key words： issues approaches practiceIntroductionLexVocabulary is a very important part of learning a second language, since it is an essential part of language i

3、tself. Wilkins said: “ Without grammar very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. ” And Meara said: errors outnumber other types of error by more than three to one. ” Therefore, we have no reason to ignore the position of vocabulary in our English teaching. However, sin

4、ce English and Chinese are quite different, students feel it hard to memorize so many words. What?s worse, they still cannot use those words appropriately and efficiently after their memorization .Consequently, it is necessary to arouse students? interess in learning words and a certain excitement i

5、n personal development in this area. And it is the teachers? duty to help students by giving them ideas on how to learn vocabulary and some guidance on what to learn. For teachers, vocabulary teaching is not usually thought of as interesting as other items. It is difficult for teachers to design the

6、 vocabulary teaching vividly. So how to help students get the words meaning clearly , quickly, and correctly and how to improve the ways of teaching vocabulary becomes teachers? main concern.1. Vocabulary issuesThere are a variety of problems in the current vocabulary teaching in our country. First

7、of all, some textbooks appear to be telling teachers that students could learn all the words they needed without help. In fact, teachers are sometimes told that they ought not to teach many words before their students had mastered the grammar and the sound system of language. In journal articles for

8、 teachers, vocabulary was seldom mentioned.Pronunciation and grammar were emphasized, but there was little or no emphasis on vocabulary. In short, vocabulary has been neglected in programs for teachers during much of the twentieth century. Secondly, vocabulary is taught by following three principles

9、: pronunciation, spelling and meaning. In the text, vocabulary is taught how to make up a sentence and the grammar about it. What?s more, the test of vocabulary is to make students pronounce it and use it to make up simple sentences. Therefore, after more than six years? study, students know many wo

10、rds and sentence patterns, but it is so pity that they can not say one complete sentence. Although they can use the simple words to communicate with each other, they will make a mistakes. Many students know little about the difference of the culture, so they can not use the right words in the very s

11、ituation.Vocabulary instruction is often a challenge issue in a mainstream classroom. Teachers struggle to make the vocabulary instruction to meet the needs of the students with vocabularies ranging from 500 to 3000. The result is that words targeted for the grade?level instruction are out of reach

12、of the beginning level English students. Here are different levels of the knowledge of word understanding: having no knowledge,having a general sense of a word, having a narrow context?based knowledge, having a knowledge of a word that can?t be called to use it in a appropriate situations and having

13、 decontextualized knowledge of a word, its relationship to other words and how it can be used metaphorically. In view of that, I?m motivated personally and professionallyto find effective ways to teach vocabulary and narrow the vocabulary gap. As it is agreed that an emphasis should be put on helpin

14、g students acquiring a solid vocabulary foundation. Vocabulary building and practice should be seen as a curriculum because it plays a significant role in English learning.2. Vocabulary teaching PracticeThe features of a word can not be taught at one time. They should be taught on suitable occasions

15、 according to the levels and needs of the students and characteristics of the word. However, for the students, perhaps it is less difficult to learn vocabulary items for the first time than to consolidate and remember them. It is too often that we hear students complain that they keep learning and f

16、orgetting. Some people say vocabulary can not be taught, and that it can only be learned bythe students. This is perhaps partially true. When students study vocabulary individually, very often it is rote learning, whose effectiveness is seldom guaranteed, particularly when they do not fully understa

17、nd the meaning of the vocabulary. Only students study vocabulary together, say in groups, through various activities and under the teacher?s supervision, does vocabulary learning become more fun and effective. Learning is also more effective when students understand the meaning of the new vocabulary

18、. Below are some vocabulary consolidation activities or teaching practice that can be done in class.2.1 Activating prior knowledge and build background knowledgePrior knowledge the students bring to a text should be activated and drawn upon to increase comprehension and vocabulary retention. It?s im

19、portant to tap into the students prior knowledge in order to provide a context for new vocabulary words. Students benefit from connecting concrete from their prior knowledge to the abstract new words and concepts they are learning. It provides labels that develop out of experiences. These experience

20、s help to build background knowledge the students need to know to understand a text. Building students? background knowledge around a given topic and providing familiar content reading materials helps improve their reading comprehension ability.2.2 Ensuring students know the meaning of basic wordsSo

21、me basic words are easy to teach ,using pictures ,labeling, showing real objects, playing a game, employing demonstration explain the meaning of the wordseither through the use of reality or in pictures. Then demonstration an action is a better way. For example, when the teacher presents the concept

22、s like stretching and walking, he or she can stretch or walk. Many action verbs (sit, sneeze, dig, stumble, open, etc) can be presented by miming. Some adjectives like“ happy ” “ angry ” “ sleepy ” can be taught byfacial expression and gestures. Describing and answering Students are put into pairs.

23、One has a picture; the other has a blank piece of paper and a pencil. The students having the picture must tell his partner what to draw so that the drawing ends up the same as the original picture. The student must not show the picture until the drawing is completed.Basic vocabulary foundation help

24、s them understand explanation of academic vocabulary coming later.2.3Using the word in the contextTo learn vocabulary through context is an excellent way, students use appropriate guessing strategies when encountering unknown words. Twaddell and more recently Krashen both argue that non?native speak

25、ers will most efficiently increase their vocabulary through reading, rather than through direct vocabulary teaching. Teaching vocabulary through reading means to ask students to understand and learn words from context. To students, it is easy to know the meaning of the words according to the context

26、. Students should not think more about grammar when they are reading. This kind of way is more interesting than just writing the words on the board and explaining them to students. It can also give students a deep impression.And, we also should guess meaning from context. Guessing meaning of unfamil

27、iar words or expressions from context is not a new idea. The problem is how students can develop the ability to do so. Initially students need the teachers help regarding what contextual clues to look for and how these clues can contribute to the discovery (revealing) of meaning. Generally speaking,

28、 the topic, the grammatical structure, the possible meaning connection between the given word and other words and linguistic pattern where the word appears may give hints to the meaning in one way or another, look at an example:The captain asked the seamen to throw the ZZ(Zanchor.ZZ)If student does

29、not know the word anchor, there are enough clues for them to guess the meaning. Who do seamen usually throw anyway?2.4 Using words building to teach wordsWith vocabulary increasing, we can learn words by analyzing word building, which can help students to memorize words by understanding the meaning

30、of the words. What?s more, it is helpful for students to analyze language phenomenon.Students should learn to detect morphemes in words. Students do not always realize that words are constructed of morphemes which share the burden of the meaning among them very clearly. Students should learn to dete

31、ct morphemes which occur in a number of words and which can help them to identify at least part of the meaning, thus assisting them in guessing from context the meaning of apparently new items as an aid to discover the meanings of apparently unknown words that can be interesting and profitable. Sens

32、itivity to word formation will assist language learners in extracting meaning by making them conscious of the parts of speech to which words belong.1. Using roots. For example, we can guess the meanings of useful, useless, user by having learnt use. Teachers can say “ useful ” comes from use, it mea

33、ns“of use ”.2. Using prefixes. For example, students have learnt the words tell and write, if teachers teach them the meaning of the prefix???？re???？. They will know the other words. re?病?means again , retell means to tell again .3. Using suffixes. For example, Chine?Chinese, Japan?Japanese2.5 Using s

34、ynonyms or antonymsThere are many words and phrases having the same or contrast meaning in English, so when teaching vocabulary, we can use synonyms or antonyms to enlarge students? vocabulary. For example, take care of means look after Therefore, when we teach take care of ; we can use lookto expla

35、in it. In this way, we not only masterut take care ofknow the phrase look after .For another example, in class, the students are given a listof words and asked to find pairs of words, either synonyms orantonyms. The words and below are six pairs of synonyms and six pairs of antonyms.full jumper opti

36、mistic awake elect pullover awful hard?working terrible continue clean empty go onchoose dirty pessimistic rude wait a minute thickthinimpolite hang onasleep lazyIn this way, many synonyms and antonyms can be learnt at one time. And in my opinion, it is a very easy and interesting way to teach Engli

37、sh vocabulary. This way can stimulate students? interest to find out words and to review the words they have learned.2.6 Teaching new words by offering different parts of speechWords can be classified into many parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective, adverb and so on. For example, care (?n.?) care (

38、?v.? careful (?adj. ?) carefully (?adv.?); wonder (?n.?) wonder (?v.?) wonderful (?adj . ?) wonderfully(?adv.?); agree (?v.?)agreement (?n.?);govern (?v.?) government (?n.?); develop (?v.?) development(n.)“ We youth should ZZ(ZshoulderZZ) the responsibility of building a powerful China. ”“ A lion wo

39、n?t attack a person unless it?s ZZ(Zcornered.ZZ)”During the time teachers instruct words, if students can master a word?s different parts of speech, they can use it freely in future.2.7 Test and test procedureTest is a very significant part in teaching words. Through it, we can know about the result

40、s of our teaching and learning. The best way to test students? vocabulary is to write words by themselves.Before every class, four or five students are asked to write words they hear on the blackboard and the others will write on their exercises paper. After that, teachers examine the words that stu

41、dents write, and at this time, teachers can explain some words related to the one on the blackboard. In addition, teachers make a mark, because at the end of the term, teachers can examine their students according to these marks.In order to make the test effectively, there is some advice:1. Students

42、 shouldn?t write names on the test paper in order to reduce their fear of exposing their weak knowledge of English and to insure better result.2. Don?t resort to any help of any kind while talking the test, such as friends, books, dictionaries and so on.2.8 Using conversion to teach new wordsConvers

43、ion is the formation of new words by converting words of one class to another. This is a method of turning words from one part of speech to a different part. These words are new only in a grammatically sense. Since the words do not change in morphological structure but in function, this process is a

44、lso known as functional shift. Pay attention to the word “ round” in the following sentences ：(1) He was knocked out in the second round.(2) Round the number off to the nearest tenth.(3) The women gathered round our room.(4) The sun was bright and round.(5) People over there came from all the countr

45、y round.In each sentence “ round ” is used as a different part of speech： noun, verb, preposition, adjective and adverb.2.9 Reviewing , reinforcing and combining explanation withpracticeReviewing and reinforcing is critical practice. Students benefit from listening, reading, story?mapping, retelling

46、 and dramatization of a story, writing and using the new words.The key to explanation is to be brief and to the point. when the teacher is teaching anything, he/she should pay more attention to teaching or learning methods and spend more time cultivating students? language skills, lay stress on stud

47、ents? needs and interests and provide them with as many chances as possible to practice using English. Only by doing a great number of comparative exercises can students master it. Refined explaining and more practicing is advocated. Refined explaining means making the language points clear by explaining in a limited time. More practicing means ensuring that students have enough time to participate activities to check what the teacher has taught. In the light of different students and their levels, the teacher should work out a ser