大学英语词汇教学策略

大学英语词汇教学策略［Abstract］The paper discusses the difficulties in vocabulary teaching and learning, and it explores the strategies of learning vocabularies and of memorizing vocabularies in the college English teaching. The strategies include context teaching, the direct teaching methods, teaching vocabulary with semantic field, teaching word formation, etc.. If the students master the strategies to remember the words in a scientific way, they can enlarge vocabulary effectively, their learning interest can be generated and learning efficiency can be improved.［Key words］English vocabulary,vocabulary teaching,strategiesI. IntroductionAs one of the three major elements of a language, vocabulary is indispensable to master a language. Wilkins (1992, p. 30) once said, “grammar provides the overall patterns, and th e vocabulary is the material in the patterns.According to College English Curriculum, college students for CET-4 are required to master 4500 words and for CET-6 6000 words. To pass CET -4 and CET -6, most of the college students make every effort to memorize these words. The result, however, is far from beingsatisfactory. Thus, how to improve English vocabulary teaching so as to achieve the vocabulary teaching task has become an urgent problem.Traditionally, there are three kinds of common practice in vocabulary teaching. Perhaps the most common way to teach vocabulary is by presenting the unfamiliar list of individual word items before the learners encounter the texts. Secondly, some teachers only ask their learners to memorize the word lists at the back of their course books without paying any attention to how they are used in real language contexts. What’s worse is that they cannot equip their learners with the ability to use the words correctly in their language production work. In order to solve these problems, this paper is drafted. This paper will illustrate some different strategies to help students master vocabulary, if students can use them in an effective and scientific way, they will remember vocabulary easily.Ⅱ. Previous Studies on English V ocabularyTeaching at HomeIt was not until 1980 that we Chinese began to research into language learning strategies. Wen Qiufang (1996, p. 66), in his book On English Learning Strategies, expands learning strategy system, the innate factors of the system as well as how to coordinate and control otherfactors affecting strategies selection.However, most of the current researches emphasize on theory analysis and only some of them deal with empirical research. Besides, some principles are unpractical in real teaching. Therefore, we need to gather experience in daily teaching class in order to improve the methods of teaching vocabulary.Ⅲ. The Problems of V ocabulary Learning andTeaching in College3.1 Low efficiency in mastering vocabularyEnglish learning and teaching are considered as “consuming more time but achieving less efficiency”. Allen (2000, p. 44) claims that teachers give little attention to methods to help students learn vocabulary. They spend plenty of time on remembering words, but they find it hard to remember vocabulary and easy to forget. Gradually, these students lose their interest in English because they find it hard to learn the words by heart.3.2 Putting more emphasis on grammarIn English class, teachers pay much attention to grammar. When analyzing a sentence, the teachers often concentrate on sentence ratherthan vocabulary. Teachers read the new words and point out its meaning in some text. Furthermore, the national college entrance examination tests basic knowledge, including grammar, tense, and count and so on. As a result, teachers spend more time teaching grammar than vocabulary in class.Ⅳ. The Strategies of College English V ocabulary Teaching4.1 Context teachingContext means the words that come just before and after a word, phrase or statement and help you to understand its meaning. Thus words should not be taught out of context. Moreover, context teaching caters to students for an effective reading and communication by making use of the words they have learnt. More importantly, context teaching helps cultivate students’good habits of reading between the lines. For example, in Unit1 of College English, Book 2, there is a sentence containing a new phrase: “That magazine story, and the person who wrote it, I have never been able to track down.” In light of the context, we can guess the meaning of “track down”, which means “find” or “discover.” Then let’s add one more example: “It was almost two weeks before the police tracked down the facts they needed.”4.2 The direct teaching methodThe Direct teaching method means teachers give a class directly, often by a kind of auxiliary teaching equipment, such as pictures, material object, PPT and gestures, expressions and so on.Harmer (2000, p. 55) said, “The teacher can also ensure that the students understand the meaning of a word by showing pictures (photographs, cards. etc).”For instance, when a teacher teaches a book, he can take an actual book, points out the book and says “book.” Then she takes another book and says “book” Students will understand “a book” is a book after teachers repeat “a book.” With the development of science and technology, the computer is a common teaching tool, so teachers can use PPT to show pictures to teach what a tree, bank, plane is.4.3 Teaching vocabulary with semantic fieldThe basic assumption underlying the theory of semantic field is that words do not exist in isolation: rather, they form different semantic fields, such as a vegetable field which contains all kinds of words that denote vegetables: spinach, cauliflower, cabbage, pepper, eggplant, onion, tomato, cucumber. Words that belong to the same semantic class are in the same semantic field. According to the theory of semantic field, the meaning of a word is decided by its relationships with other words in the same semantic field. There are various kinds of such sense relationships, for example, hyponymy, part/whole relationships, synonymy andantonymy. By association of words in the same semantic field, we can train our students to constantly deepen their recollection of words learnt and reinforce learning and retention of newly learnt words.4.4 Teaching word formationWord formation is an effective way to help students see words in the network of association. As McCarthy (2001, p. 87) puts it: to know the meaning of a word becomes the task of knowing its associations with other words. Therefore, to teach lexical items effectively, teachers must familiarize students with these common roots, prefixes, suffixes. For example, in teaching the word “transplant” students are told that the prefix transmits across; beyond; into another place or state. When they are aware of the meaning of organ (liver, kidney, heart) transplant, they are asked to tell the meanings of the following words with a given context: transport, transform, translate, transact, transfer, transit, transatlantic, transparent, translucent. While learning the word scribble, the root -scribe is taught first. It means to write.The most productive are affixation, compounding and conversion. According to Hogben and Lawson, (1993, pp. 145-147) words produced through affixation constitute 30﹪to 40﹪of the total number of new words; compounding yields 28% to 30% of all the new words; conversion brings 26﹪of the new vocabulary into modern English.4.5 Teaching usage of wordsLinguist Brown (2001, p. 34) points out: the word is only really acquired if the learner can use it actively and correctly, or has efficient recall of it in a variety of contexts. So our efforts to acquire a large vocabulary should never culminate in better comprehension. As we all know, the ultimate purpose of vocabulary development is to help learners to communicate effectively with these words learnt. Thus it is necessary for teachers to teach usage of words that is, to explain the collocations, to learn idioms, related proverbs and to distinguish synonyms.1. CollocationCollocation is a difficult but important part of vocabulary acquisition. Merely knowing the Chinese meaning of a word does not guarantee correct use of the word. Take a look at the following example. It is right to say “open the door”, “open fire”, but “open TV”, “open the light” or “open an operation” do not make much sense to a westerner. Instead, “turn on the TV”, “turn on the light”, “perform an operation” should be used.In teaching “ restrain”, if students are given the nouns and prepositions that go with it, they can have phrases like restrain one’stemper/anger/laughter, restrain sb from doing sth. In addition, they canhave the collocations of its noun form restraint: submit to restraint, break loose from all restraints, without restraints.2. IdiomsIdioms learning arouses students interest in learning new words, hence enhances their memory of these words. Take the idiom “let the cat out of the bag” as an example, students understand every word, but they have no idea about the meaning of the idiom. After given a context, they are able to know its meaning to tell a secret by a mistake. Thus students are taught not to be easily contented with merely knowing the individual word; they should learn idioms for better understanding.3. ProverbsProverbs in every culture are considered crystal of human wisdom. Making use of related proverbs in vocabulary teaching stimulates students’interest. Take the following proverbs as examples:A hedge between keeps friendship green. (similar proverb: good fences make good neighbor.)To err is human, to forgive is divine.Many kiss the baby for the nurse’s sake.A horse stumbles with four legs. (The italicized words are newwords to be learned.)Ⅴ. ConclusionThis thesis mainly discusses the strategies of vocabulary teaching, and of course, everyone realizes the importance of the vocabulary. Just as Wilkins once said, “without grammar, only a little information could be covered, without vocabulary, no information could be covered.” So, vocabulary is the key to language learning. However, learning vocabulary is not easy thing. In this thesis, it illustrates some problems which lie in vocabulary teaching and learning. In order to tackle these problems, the thesis puts forward some strategies, including context method, direct teaching method, semantic method, word formation method, and teaching usage of words.If students master these strategies, they will find it less difficult to master vocabulary than before. So, teachers should teach students how to learn instead of what to learn.【References 】［1］Brown, HD. 2001. Teaching by principle: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagog［M］.Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.\[2\] Hamre, J. 2000. How to teach English［M］.Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.\[3\] Hogben, D, Lawson, M. J. 1993. Strategies for foreign language vocabulary acquisition［M］.Western Australia: The Annual Conference of the Australia Association for Research in Education.\[4\] McCarthy, M. 2001. V ocabulary［M］.Oxford: Oxford University Press.\[5\] Wen, Qiufang. 1996. On English learning strategies ［M］.Foreign Language Teaching Press.\[6\] Wilkins, D. A. 1997. V ocabulary linguistic in language teaching ［M］.London: Eduard Arnold Ltd..\[7\] Wilkins, D.A. 1997. National syllabuses［M］.Oxford: Oxford University Press.［摘要］本文对大学英语词汇教法进行了探究，如：情景法、直观教学法、语义场法、构词法等策略。