Vocabulary
Teaching
in Middle
学 校：内蒙古土左旗二中
年 级：初中二年级
班 级：四班
姓 名：吴姝琴
日 期：2010-9-25
School
Table of Contents
Abstract in English.............................................…....................................2
Key words in English.............................................……...............................2
Abstract in Chinese................................................……...............................2
Key words in Chinese............................................……….............................2
I. Introduction..................................................…....………………...............3
II. Why to Teach Vocabular................................…………………................3
1.The importance of vocabulary
2.The problems of learning vocabulary
III. How to Teach Vocabulary?.............…………………............................4
1.Present new word
2.Help our students to consolidate vocabulary
3.Help our students to expand vocabulary
IV. CONCLUSION.............................................……...................................9
全文共 9 页 11000 字
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Vocabulary Teaching in Middle School
[Abstract]：In this paper I talked about the method of vocabulary teaching. As we all
known, vocabulary is the foundation of sentence and article. Only when we have a
large number of vocabulary, we can listen, speak, read and write English better. The
ability of this four aspects can be improved. So vocabulary is very important in our
process of learning English. But we often hear students complain that they can keep
learning and forgetting, or students learn vocabulary in ineffective ways such as rote
learning. If we want to solve these problems, we must put vocabulary teaching in
the first place. So I introduced all kinds of methods for presenting news words,
consolidating vocabulary and expanding vocabulary. When we presenting new words,
we can use pictures, diagrams, maps, real objects, mime or act, synonyms or
autonyms. When we consolidate vocabulary we use labelling, spotting the differences,
describing and drawing, playing a game, word series, and so on. When we expand
vocabulary, we use key word association, root, suffix, prefix to practice it, at last, we
can make students study vocabulary effectively an
easily.
Key words: vocabulary, teach, present, consolidate, expand
[摘
要]： 这篇论文我主要谈论了词汇的重要性，学生在学习，记忆，巩固及
扩展词汇方面存在的问题，针对这些问题我们该采用什么样的教学方法来呈现新
单词，帮助学生巩固和扩展词汇，比如利用图片，表格，地图，实物，滑稽的动
作等来呈现单词，利用贴标签，描述，画图，做游戏，归类等来巩固词汇，通过
对关键词的联想，词根，词缀等来对词汇进行扩展，以达到让学生既有效又轻松
地学习掌握词汇。
关键词：
词汇，教学，呈现，巩固，扩展
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Vocabulary Teaching in Middle School
I. Introduction.
According to the Senior English Syllabus, senior students should be able to
master about 3,000 words after they finish the studying. Obviously, this is a much
heavier task for all the students. The language abilities such as listening, speaking,
reading, writing depends on enlargement of vocabulary. Therefore, vocabulary
learning plays an important role in the process of the English learning and teaching.
II.Why to teach vocabulary?
1.The importance of vocabulary
(1)Vocalbulary is the foundation of sentence and article.
(2)Only when we have a large number of vocabulary, we can listen, speak, read
and write English better. The ability of this four aspects can be improved.
2.The problems
of learning and teaching vocabulary
(1)English vocabulary is always one of the toughtest parts in learning the
anguage since vocabulary memorizing and decaying have become a big headache
problem for most English learners.
(2)The students always complain about having forgotten what they
remembered a few days ago and often find they constantly suffer from lack of a
large number of vocabularies while using them in various skills of English.
(3)Apparently, the real purpose of learning a foreign language is to
communicate with it. But with a small size of vocabulary, it is impossible to express
oneself appropriately and understand others. As a result, communication is a kind of
failure.
(4)Word forgetting and decaying has seriously affected students' development in
English learning and looking for an efficient approach to teach vocabulary has
became very urgent. A good teaching approach should be able to help learners to
acquire the biggest communicative ability through smallest memory.
(5)Of course, it can't be denied that the fastest and most efficient method of
increasing vocabulary is to analyze and master the structure of the words. That is to
learn some roots, prefixes and suffixes. However, this doesn't enable students to
understand words accurately and use them properly since it's only based on the
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language form and surface meaning. Very often, their product are very Chinglish.
This shows there is a weakness in our lexical teaching.
III. How to Teach vocabulary
1.Presenting new words.
(1)Prepare example to show meaning. Examples are best if they are created by
the teachers themselves rather than taken from dictionaries. Students also look up
words in dictionaries, they tune out when the teacher talks.
(2)Ask students to tell the meaning first. Teachers should always elicit
meaning from students before they offer the meaning.
(3)Think about how to show the meaning of a word with related words such as
synonyms, antonyms etc.
(4)Think about how to check students' understanding.
(5)Think about the context in real life where the word might be used. Relating
newly learned language to real life promotes high motivation.
(6)Think about possible misunderstanding or confusion that student may have.
(7)Draw pictures, diagrams and maps to show meaning or connection of
meanings;
(8)Use real objects(realia) to show meanings;
(9)Mime or act to show meanings, e.g. brushing teeth, playing Ping-Pong;
(10)Use synonyms or antonyms to explain meanings;
(11)Use lexical sets, e.g.cook: fry, boil, bake, grill;
(12)Translate and exemplify, especially with technical words or with abstract
meaning;
(13)Use word formation rules and common affixes.
2.Help our students to consolidate vocabulary.
(1)Labelling
Students are given a picture. They are to write the names of objects indicated in
the picture. A competitive element can be introduced by making the first student to
finish the winner.
(2)Spotting the differences
Students are put into pairs. Each member of the pair receives a picture which is
slightly different from his partner's. Students hide the pictures from one another and
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then, by a process of describing, questioning and answering, discover what the
differences are.
(3)Describing and drawing
Students are put into pairs. One student has a picture, the other has a blank
piece of paper and a penicl. The student 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.
(4)playing a game
Students are shown a picture or a tray with many objects on it, or a series of
different flash cards or magazine pictures. They have one or two minutes to
memorise as many of the objects as they can. The cards, pictures or tray are then
taken away and the students have to say what they saw, or write down everything
they can remember seeing, then compare their answers with the rest of the class.
(5)Using word thermometers
These are useful for indicating different degrees in size, speed, age, distance,
emotion and etc. Students are given a list of words in jumbled order. They have to
place these words in the correct place on the thermometer.
(6)Using word series
Students construct the series following an example.
Example:
Transport:
Furniture:
Buildings:
Fruits:
Vegetables:
Cutlery:
knife, fork, spoon
car
plane
table
chair
house
apple
carrot
hut
orange
cucumber
bus
ship
drawer
bookstore
room
tower
banana
cherry
leek
train
mushroom
subway
bed
hotel
sofa
shop
mango
pear
onion
(7)Word bingo
The
teacher thinks of an area of language
(e.g.shopping) that the students
have recently been
studying. Students draw nine squares (3X3) on a
piece of paper
and put 9 words connected with
shopping in the squares. The teacher then calls out,
one at a time, words connented with shopping. If the
students have the word in the squares, they cross it
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out. The first student to cross out all the words in the squares is the winner. The
game can be played for more than one round.
shopper
customer
client
bargain
seller
pay
shop
buy
mon
store
sell
sale
market
price
discount
supermarket
goods
receipt
y
A different version of word bingo is that the first students to cross out a line of
three words either horizontally, vertically or diagonally should shout out "Bingo", and
he or she will be the winner.
(8)Odd man out
The teacher writes a set of words on the blackboard and asks the students to
find the "odd man out". For example, in the set "cheese, eggs, oranges, bread, soap,
and meat", the word "soap"is the "odd man out".
(9)Synonyms and antonyms
The students are given a list of words and asked to find pairs of words, either
synonyms or antonyms. The words in the box below are six pairs of synonyms and
six pairs of antonyms. Can you find them?
full
jumper
optimistic
awake
select
clean
continue
awful
hard-working impolite
wait
go on
a minute
hang on
choose
dirty
pullover
pessimistic rude
empty
asleep
lazy
terrible
thin
thick
(10)Using word categories
Students put the jumbled words in the middle into the boxes marked with
difference categories. Below is an example:
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Countries
Jobs
Fruits
milk
typist
apples
pigs
shirts
Germany chickens
Japan
shoes
oranges
peaches
wine
cows
butcher
tea
driver
Greece socks
Turkey
trousers
baker
dogs
sheep
coffee
plums
pears
Animal
Clothe
s
Drinks
3. Help our students to expand vocabulary?
In addition to the root-prefix-suffix method, it is an effective way in helping
students with their vocabulary expansion. The processes of this method are as the
following.
1.Set aside 5 to 10 minutes each time the teacher meets his\her students.
According to the needs, the times can be chosen either at the beginning or at the end
of the class.
2.The teacher chooses a single key word as a topic and then writes it in the
centre of the blackboard.
3.Ask students to recall all the words they can think of that are connected with
the key word and write them on their own pieces of paper.
4.Ask each students to check his or her written words with his\her neighbour.
They can have a discussion in a low voice and help each other supplement their lists.
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Meanwhile, they can also consult their dictionaries if necessary. The teacher, during
this period of time, can walk in the classroom, in case students need his\her help.
5.The teacher asks students to tell the whole class their listed words in turn
without repeating the same word. Simultaneously, the teacher writes them on the
blackboard with a line connecting them to the original word in the centre, so that the
result is a "sun-ray" shape just list them one by one.
6.The teacher adds some new related words to the previous ones if it is ecessary,
for it is now the time that the students accept the new words.
7.The students do note taking for the final supplementation.
Much of the vocabulary in the normal text books must be learned without it, no
one can learn enough vocabulary. Topic related vocabulary teaching should be to a
great extent, based on the content of textbooks. When the teacher and students are
carrying on with the material in the textbooks, the teacher, now and then can decide
a topic and set aside a few minutes to do the topic related vocabulary teaching,
Teacher follows the above steps, Here is the result of the teacher and student,
production.
Family
-grandfather
-grandson
-grandmother
-granddaughter
-father
-nephew
-mother
-niece
-son
-cousin
-daughter
-great-grandfather
-uncle
-great-grandmother
-aunt
-father-in-law
-mother-in-law
-sister-in-law
-brother-in-law
There are many examples, such as clothes.
Topic related to vocabulary teaching should also be connected with real life
circumstances.
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VI. Conclusion
In this paper we discuss vocabulary and vocabulary learning. Many students
devote large amounts of time and energy to the learning of vocabulary, but they still
complain that their vocabulary size is not large enough or they cannot avoid forgetting.
Generally speaking, there are two problems. One problem is that students treat
vocabulary items indiscriminately.
considering the large size of English vocabulary, there is no wonder that
students complain about their small vocabulary size. Another problem is that many
students learn vocabulary in ineffective ways such as rote learning. So it is very
important to make students aware that not all words are equally important and that
effective ways of vocabulary learning help to reduce forgetting.
Although much of the work of vocabulary learning is the responsibility of the
students, teachers' guidance and help are invaluable. If teachers present new
vocabulary items effectively, it saves a lot of time and energy for consolidation.
Besides, teachers' work should also include helping students to develop vocabulary
building strategies.
Bibliography
Wang Qiang (2000)《A Course in English Language Teaching》High Education
press. (VII,i,ii,iii72-77)
ZhangWeiYou (1997) Foreign Language Teaching And Research
Press《English Lexicology》(IV,i,45-51)
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