To Master and Apply Words in Practice

题目：让学生在实际中使用词汇项目设计者吴燕姬Title:To Master and Apply Words inPracticeWu YanjiAcknowledgmentIn writing this project design I have benefited from my supervisors Mr. Huang Weiliang and Mr. Guo Jianlong, with whose patience and timely help, my project design started and proceeded smoothly. I must show my great thankfulness to them.Secondly, I must thank my colleagues Ma Y uhu and Zhou Mingna for their encouragement and discussions with me, without whom the project would not have been finished.Great thanks should also go to my lovely students for their warmly-hearted support and active participation in the project implementation.Contents PageAbstract (5)Introduction (6)Problem and problem analysis (7)Possible solutions (10)Project objective (10)Project hypothesis (10)Project rationale (10)Subject description (11)Research Design (12)Project implementation (14)Project evaluation (19)Techniques for data collection (19)Data analysis (20)Conclusion (22)References (23)Appendix (24)内容提要主要观点和内容：本文主要针对现在高中英语教学中单词的重要性, 同时学生普遍单词记不牢和不会使用, 影响了表达和写作等问题, 以及在词汇教学方面比较传统化,多采取操练和跟说的形式。

而这种简单的重复不能保证单词的掌握和应用。

要掌握单词和应用, 就要让单词活起来。

有鉴于此，提出假设：如果教师能设计形式多样，综合性强的活动，让单词活起来，使学生真正掌握单词并用在实际中，从而提高英语的表达和综合能力。

研究方法：在这次课堂行为研究里，我使用了分析法、原因分析法、头脑风暴法、问卷调查法等来帮助开展，并设计了一些具体的教学活动，如：辨认，挑选，完成句子，单词游戏等。

在实施的过程中学生掌握单词的能力有所提高，能较好地表达自己的意见。

大部分人能记住所学的单词，综合能力有所提高。

这个研究将会持续下去以进一步提高学生的运用能力。

关键词：掌握单词、表达能力、综合能力、应用能力。

AbstractIt is a project report to solve the problem that most of senior middle school students have difficulty in remembering new words, or they forget the words soon after they have learned them from the text book. They just simply remember the meanings of the words. Needless to say, they can’t use the words either, nor can they express themselves freely. What’s more, teachers would typically take the form of repetition or drills in teaching new words. This simply-repeated activity is no guarantee that they will master words. It is difficult for the students to change the short-term memory into permanent memory. In order to ensure long-term recall, words need to be “put to work”. They need to be placed in working memory.It is hypothesized that I can design many different kinds of tasks so that I can help the students to commit words to their memory. They are able to express themselves better and improve their integrating skills.Effective ways are most important in my attempt, including the analytic method, cause analysis, brainstorming, questionnaires and a series of activities, e.g. identifying, selecting, matching, etc. The result proves that the ways I designed is effective for mastering words.Key words: mastering words expressing skills integrating skills applying skillsIntroductionI’m now teaching Senior Grade One students in a middle school. After one semester, I found that my students’ vocabulary was so limited. Every time when I dictated new words, the result was disappointing. I know that even the best students forget words. So more important, perhaps as a remedy against forgetting, is recycling. The research shows that spaced review of learned material can reduce the rate of forgetting. But it’s not enough simply to repeat words. The better way is to recycle them in different ways, and at successive levels of depth.Based on some approaches that I have learned from “English Language Teaching Methodology and considering the characteristics of my students, I decided to adopt a way of recycling and integration activities to help my students with words-learning.Problem and problem analysisProblemThe problem I have is that most of my students can’t commit words to the memory firmly. They forget them very soon.Problem analysisIn my teaching, the problem identified was really a serious problem. There were three main reasons.Firstly, the lesson plan I designed were poor and not interesting. I can’t give the help to my students in time when they have difficulty. I didn’t pay enough attention to these, which made my students lost their interest and confidence. Secondly, some students are too lazy to memorize the new words. So they are weak in English. Thirdly, there are 60 students in my class. This kind of size may have some negative effect. The classroom is too noisy and difficult to manage.The problem had been troubling me for a long time and now I was determined to find a solution to the problem. In my study, I used four methods of analysis.Analytic methodSome of my students can memorize new words, but some of my students can’t. This made me think of these:(1)Why some can’t memorize, while others can?(2)Who are the some that can’t and who are the others that can?If students thought it important and necessary to recite new words, then the problem is actually caused by myself, not by my students. Probably my lesson plan is poorly designed or my words-teaching method is not suitable for my students.Cause analysisIn this case, I kept asking myself questions and tried to provide some answers to them. I asked myself why most of my students can’t remember new words? In order to know more about this, I designed a cause exploration procedure as the following:Questions answers 1) Is it because they don’t think English words are perhapsimportant in studying English?2) Is it because they are not interested in studying English? maybe3) Is it because they are not motivated? possibly yes4) Is it because the methods I used are not suitable for them? yes5) Is it because my instructions are not clear? possibly yes6) Is it because of the lesson plan is poor? possibly yes7) Is it because they have some difficulties unsolved maybeBy themselves?8) Is it because the classroom is getting too noisy? MaybeBrainstorming actionWhen I was engaged in the problem, I consulted my colleagues and discussed the problem with my students. They gave me a lot of advice and help so that I pondered the problem more deeply and carefully.Questionnaire surveyIn order to discover the causes about the questions raised above, I designed a questionnaire. I asked each of my students to fill in a worksheet, and then hand them in. I collected the worksheets, and carefully analysized the data and then evaluated the results. It showed that 20%of the students liked English very much, 80% of them thought that to memorize words well is necessary and they thought raising vocabulary can improve their English levels. But 5% of them still thought vocabulary was not so important. From the data, I could see most of the students were clear about the importance and necessity of English words. But they lacked interest, and they were not motivated.Possible solutionsTaking the above factors into consideration, the following solutions are proposed:1. Employing a range of activity types to help the students to put words to work.2. Designing different and interesting tasks to motivate the students to memorize words.3. Creating a comfortable atmosphere of learning, instead of a boring or dull atmosphere.Project objectiveThis project is aimed to let the students master words through integration activities.Project hypothesisIt is hypothesized that I can design many different kinds of tasks so that I can help the students to commit words to their memory. They are able to express themselves better and improve their integrating skills. Project rationale“Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.”This is how the linguist David Wilkinssummed up the importance of vocabulary learning. Words need not only to be learned, but also to be remembered. In fact learning is remembering. For words to be integrated into long-term memory, they need to be subjected to different kinds of operations.The best way against forgetting is recycling. The research shows that spaced review of learned material can reduce the rate of forgetting. Much better is to recycle them in different ways. New knowledge (i.e. new words) needs to be integrated into existing knowledge. In other words, to ensure long-term memory, words need to be put to work through different kinds of activities. It is a better way to memorize words and guarantee long-term memory.Subject descriptionThere are sixty students in a class. Students are studying in Grade 1 in Lichen Senior Middle School. They study Senior English for China Student’s Book and have English class six times a week. Though they have learned English for several years, their English level was not very high. Most of their vocabulary is not very good. They seldom speak English or use English except in the English class. They have to study eight different subjects, so they have little time to review English after class.Research DesignFor this research, I chose the two classes of my students as subjects. One as the Experimental Group will receive specially designed activities, while the control group goes on with its routine ways of teaching.Week 1Activity 1: Students are required to read the text quickly and find out the main idea of it. After they understand the text, I willask them to finish some exercises. These exercises arerequired students to identify new words and select thewords that they need and finish some tasks.Week 2Activity 2: This activity is arranged after language learning and lasts about fifteen minutes. Students are required to write asmany correct pairs of phrases that they have learnedrecently as possible.Week 3Activity 3: After students read the text “I have a dream”and completely understand the passage, they are asked tocomplete a short passage with proper words. Thenaccording to the context of the passage, students areasked to retell it by using the key words on theblackboard.Week 4Activity 4: The students need to have a revision after they have learned so many words. This activity is to consolidate wordsthrough games. Students sit in a circle and say a wordaccording to the requirement in turns. Another game is:students are divided into teams. They should guess thewords by the gestures.Project implementationI designed four activities to be tried out in about four weeks. And these activities are reported as follows.Week 1, Activity 1Theme: Identifying and selecting newly studied wordsInstructions: Students were required to identify new words and could select the words they need and finish the task Procedures:(Unit 11 Scientific Achievement in Student’s Book 2 B)Reading Part: Zhongguanzun (the title of the text)Stage1. Learn some new wordsStage2. Reading. Students were required to read the text quickly and find out the main idea.Stage3. a. After the students understood the text, ask them to find out four words connected with technology.b. Students were asked to find seven new phrasal verbs in thetext.c. Students were asked to underline all the words ending with–ment in the text.d. Students were asked to read the text, and then turn it over, andthen I asked and said:“Did the following words occur in the text?”Science rely failure creativity internationalhi-tech development arrange“Now check the text to see if you were right.”Stage 4. I got the students to work in pairs and asked them choose five words to describe themselves. (Words are all from the text)After five minutes, I asked the students and they answered:T: What do you think of yourself?S1: I think I’m a quiet girl.T: What about you?S2: I’m not very intelligent, but I’m diligent.S3: I think I’m usually optimistic and I’m always polite.Week 2, Activity2Theme: MatchingInstructions: This activity is arranged after language learning and lasted fifteen minutes. Students are required to match the phrasesthat have learned.Stage 1. First students were required to review some phrases.Stage 2. (T: Write some words in two columns)I asked: please write as many correct pairs of phrases that youhave learned recently as possible.Stage3. After five minutes, two students were asked to write down their phrases on the blackboard.T: Are they all right? Are there any phrases they didn’t find out?The other students were asked to write the rest of the phrases onthe blackboard.Week 3, Activity3:Theme: Review what the students have learnedInstructions: In this activity, the students were required to incorporate the newly studied words into some kinds of speaking or writingactivities.Stage1: Reading comprehensionStudents were asked to read the text “I have a dream” and makesure the students completely understood the passage.Stage2: The students were asked to complete the short passage below and finish the exercises in five minutes.Stage3: After the students finished it, I checked the answers with the whole class. And then I write down the key words of this passageon the blackboard and take away the slide. They were given tenminutes to make a preparation to retell the passage by using thekey words on the blackboard.Stage4: Some students were asked to retell the passage to the whole class.Week 4, Activity4Theme: GamesInstructions: Word-learning does not mean all work and no play. After learning so many words, the students need to have a revision.This activity was to consolidate the words through gamesand make the students more interested in learning English. Game 1.The students stood or sat in a small circle. I gave them the name of a lexical set: e.g. fruit, transport, clothes, animals or sports etc.The students should say a word of this kind in turns. Anyone who said nothing or wrong was out, until one player was left.Game 2.Also in a circle. This time I gave them the first letter of the words (e.g. B, or C,) they should say the words start with this letter,(e.g. bear, basketball, but, blouse) the players who were wrong orcouldn’t say it at once were out, until one player was left.Game 3.The class was divided into teams and each team selected a team leader who would do some gestures for other team members who would guest the words he or she wanted to express (but words couldn’t be used). The team, which guessed more and right words in the limited time, would win.Project evaluationFrom Table 1, Table 2 and Table3, I found that the activities I designed were effective and the methods I used are suitable. Also the Experimental Group students have made steady progress.Although the implementation of my project is successful, there are still some questions left. I would analyze the problem further by using the scientific methods I have learned from “Practical Project Design”and designing new tasks to solve the problem. I will use the knowledge I have learned to go on researching the problem in my classroom teaching in the future.The most frequently mentioned problems can be categorized into two aspects:Firstly, the way of teaching: I should provide more interesting tasks.Secondly, the way of learning: Some students are not interested in studying English; they have some wrong ideas in mind. Some students find it was difficult to learn English well; they lack scientific methods in their studying.T echniques for data collectionDuring this research two techniques were adopted, namely questionnaire and test. To gather information for the design of the research and to test whether the research is effective, two questionnaireswill be issued, one at the beginning of the research and the other at the end, and two tests will be held (one as the pretest, the other as the post test for comparison) to test the effect of my research.Data analysisIn order to assess the effectiveness of the above-mentioned solutions, the data were gathered mainly from two sources: two questionnaires and two tests at different time, which would be analyzed respectively in this section.Two questionnaires were issued in this research, one at the beginning of the project, the other at the end of the project. Questionnaire 2 was designed partly based on Questionnaire 1 so that comparisons could be made to see the improvement after the implementation.In both questionnaires, the students were requested to answer questions concerning their words learning in English lessons. From Table 1 we can see clearly that the students’ problems were improved after the application of the newly designed learning procedures.Table 1 ---Comparison of the amount of remembering wordsFrom Table 1, we can see clearly that the percentage of students whocan remember half of the new words have increased from 39% to 77%. The increased numbers showed that the activities I designed were effective. Y et I should not be too optimistic, since there were still 18% of my students just remember some and 5% of them can’t remember. This implies that I should found out some other reasons and methods and try to solve the problem more thoroughly.Data from the testsTwo tests were administered in both classes, one at the beginning of the program, the other at the end of the program, with the same format. Table 2 ---Means of the tests before research.Table 3---Means of the tests after researchThe above tables show clearly that the Experimental Group students have been making steady progress. In this group the rate of pass the test went up from 51% to 78%, and the rate of excellence went up from 18% to 31%, while the Control Group didn’t find any progress. From this comparison we can see that the research can help the students improve their words learning. Most students told me they could remember words so well that they were all surprised, because they just did the same effort.ConclusionThis paper is the result of the action I conducted in March 2005, which aimed at improving the students’ words learning. In order to solve the identified problem, several solutions were implemented during the action research. The data collected from questionnaires and examination shows that integrated activities can help the students improve their learning of vocabulary.From the action research, I have got a lot of benefits. My teaching skills have been improved. Of course there are some problems with it. I will analyze the problem further by using the scientific methods and design some new tasks to solve the problem.References1. Scott Thornbury, 2002. How to Teach Vocabulary. Longman Press.2. Schmitt N, 2000. Vocabulary in Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press.3. Gu Y ueguo, 2002. English Language Teaching Methodology. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.4. Guo Jianlong, Guide to Practical Project Design.Guangzhou Open University.5. Gu Y ueguo, 2002. Practical Project Design.Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.AppendixAppendix AQuestionnaire One1．你觉得单词在英语学习中重要吗？A．非常大 B 大 C 不大 D 很小2．你能否记住刚学不久的单词吗？A．能 B 大部分能 C 一半能 D 很多记不住3．你是否会经常背诵单词？A．是B有时候会 C 很少 D 很多记不住4．你记不住单词的原因是什么？（可多选）A．不懂音标 B 没有经常复习 C 讨厌枯燥的背诵D 很快忘记E 其他（请写出来）5．你希望老师给你什么帮助？A．轻松学单词 B 背单词的技巧 C 改变教授单词的形式和方法 D 其他6．你认为多阅读英语文章对英语词汇学习有帮助吗？A．很有帮助 B 有一些帮助 C 帮助不大 D 没有帮助Appendix BQuestionnaire Two1．现在你认为单词的掌握和词汇量在英语学习中重要吗？A．非常重要 B 重要C不太重要D不重要2.经过这段时间的学习，你觉得记单词困难吗？A 很简单B 比以前容易多C 一般D 还是很难3.现在，你能否记住刚学不久的单词吗？A．能 B 大部分能 C 一半能 D 很多记不住4.你觉得这段时间的学习对你英语有帮助吗？A 很有帮助B 有一些帮助C 有一点D 帮助不大5．你觉得这样的活动和练习效果如何？A．很好 B 较好 C 一般 D 较差6．现在你对英语学习有信心吗？A．很有信心 B 较有信心C有点信心 D 还没有信心7．你对现在的词汇教学有什么建议？请写出来Appendix CTest OneAppendix D Test TwoAppendix ETeaching diariesTeaching diary 1, Activity1 unit 11(March 3，2005 Thursday) Purpose: To be familiar with the new words, can identify them and justify their choiceThis activity lasted for about 15 minutes. The students felt very excited to know that they were chosen to participate in a project implementation. They were active in the task.The lesson went smoothly and all the things followed the teaching plan of the project design.Teaching diary 2, Activity2 unit 13 (March 14, 2005 Monday ) Purpose: To match the phrases that have learnedIt lasted about 15 minutes. The students seemed to master the words better than before. I thought I would design more activities for the students.Teaching diary 3, Activity3 unit 14 (March 18, 2005Friday) Purpose: To incorporate the newly studied words into some kinds of speaking or writing activityThis was the third lesson of the project implementation. All the thingfollowed the designed teaching procedures. The students were all involved in the activities, because they have learned this passage in Chinese last year. Although they didn’t do very well when they retold the passage, they would try their best.Teaching diary 4, Activity 4 (March 25, 2005 Friday )Purpose: To consolidate the words through games and make words-learning more interestingIt lasted for about 40 minutes. All the procedures followed the project design. When they played the guessing game, they were so active, that laughter went out of the classroom. They seemed to like the game very much. The classroom became too noisy because some students went so excited that many of them became out of control. I think it would be better if there were clearer instruction to the class.。