时间：2022-05-06 06:46:44
[Abstract] English for a long time, they still find their vocabulary insufficient. Because of the lack of vocabulary, they cannot understand the meaning of a sentence or cannot understand what others say. And their desire to learn is very strong. Therefore, possessing the efficient strategies of vocabulary learning is especially important. From this point, according to the investigation, this paper is intended to discuss the efficiency of the association methods in middle school vocabulary learning. Only when teachers adopt the appropriate strategies can they make a productive classroom teaching and arouse students’ learning interest.
[Key Words] vocabulary；teaching method；association
1. Introduction
Vocabulary is the basic unit of language. Vocabulary to language is what bricks are to the frame of a house. If the learner does not have the words to express his or her ideas, mastering grammatical rules or pronunciation does not help. Therefore we can see that mastering of vocabulary has a great effect on English learning. In the history of English vocabulary learning, there are two opposite ideas towards the learning of vocabulary. Some claim that learning vocabulary is a waste of time, since it does not improve writing or oral skills. Others argue for the necessity of vocabulary learning, because vocabulary knowledge is one component of language skills such as reading and writing and enables language learners to use language more appropriately. Well, vocabulary, as one essential component of language, to a great extent, is a mirror to reflect students’ communicative and writing skills and students’ reading ability can also be judged from the number of vocabulary they own. The importance of vocabulary is easy to see, so we should not neglect the learning of vocabulary. Well, in fact, only when teachers adopt the appropriate strategies can they make a productive classroom teaching and arouse students’ learning interest.
The solution here is to seek scientific techniques of vocabulary learning. Students should be exposed to the vocabulary needed to express the ideas they want to communicate. The vocabulary should not be strictly limited, nor should vocabulary acquisition be stressed to the exclusion of other parts of the language system. In the following part, the author will discuss the drawbacks of several traditional vocabulary learning methods. And make a comparison between association strategies and other traditional vocabulary learning methods, at last, analysis of the efficiency of association strategies to show the students how to adopt the association vocabulary learning strategies, and the author also hopes that the thesis can help the teachers teach English vocabulary efficiently.
2. Major Methods of Traditional Vocabulary Learning in Middle Schools
2.1 Memorizing the Vocabulary List
Middle school English teachers in China usually ask students to memorize the vocabulary list in which words are isolated from the context. The old English textbook (Junior English for China, People’s Publisher of China, 1990) bears silent witness to such an approach. In one case, the teachers in middle school read the vocabulary in the word list one by one and then the teachers let the students follow them. In other case, the teachers pick out all the new words in the text, list them on a paper, and consult the dictionary for the Chinese or English meanings; for example, “display” means “show”, “arrive” means “reach”. These methods may save time and be effective. However, the relationships between words are as important as the meaning of the word in isolation: how “car” contrasts with “bus” and “truck”, and how it is related to “driver” and “engine” are as important as the word itself.
Neglecting the study of the relationships in English vocabulary system might result in students’ slowness in comprehension and inappropriateness in exploiting the English words. Being taught in these ways without a change, students might have difficulty in working out the meanings of some words, such as “time” in the following three sentences
①She is near her time. (means “She would die soon.”)
②The umpire called time. (means “The umpire called for a stop.”)
③He is in the time of his life. (means “The days he is experiencing are very enjoyable.”)
And many Chinese middle school students often make such sentences as:
2.2 Isolated Vocabulary Learning
Many English teachers tend to teach English words in one-to-one correspondence to Chinese words; for example, English “room” is “房间” in Chinese, English “house” is “房屋” in Chinese, and so on. This traditional translation teaching method which has been adopted in China for a long time is considered to be helpful. But in the long run the overuse of this method is harmful to the development of students’ language competence. Especially in the elementary stage, this method should be avoided as possible as it can be.
When students say that they know the meaning of an English word, they usually mean that they have found an equivalent word in Chinese language, but this equivalent word may be misleading. Let’s take the word “milk” for example. In the sentence of “I have milk for breakfast”, the word “milk” in Chinese culture refers to hot milk, because Chinese people are used to drink milk hot; while the word “milk” in the American culture refers to cold milk, because Americans never drink boiled milk as we Chinese do. This example shows us that the same word “milk” has different social meanings in different cultures. In fact, many linguists believe that no word can be exactly translated into another language.
2.3 Failure in Following the Memory Rule
There are two types of memory processes, which are short-term memory and long-term memory. Short-term memory means that the store of input can stay in your memory temporarily; while the long-term memory means the store of input can stay in your memory for more than 10 days, even for the whole life. In fact, our memory process is a recycling process. According to the survey of linguists, the more times the word is used, the better you remember it. But many teachers partially emphasize the function of short-term memory. They seem to care more about the amount of vocabulary input than those actually stay in students’ memory. Being forced to remember a large amount of vocabulary in this way, students are treated as if they were machines. In appearance they take in thousands of new words, but in effect only a few words which are frequently used really stay in their store and can be exploited.
There might be some teachers seeing the long-term memory rule. However, they never succeed in applying the memory rule in the classroom. They claim that the time of each period of class is limited that they can’t spend so much time on the repetition of vocabulary teaching. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t think their excuses make any sense. What matters is their ignorance of scientific teaching techniques and irresponsibility for the development of students.
3. The Efficiency of Association Strategies
3.1 Morphology Association
Morphology association method is a way to remember vocabulary by the form of the vocabulary, which is a good way to conquer the vocabulary. Association of morphology method comprises synonym and antonym association methods, prefix and suffix methods, etc. In this part the author mainly introduces the synonym and antonym association methods, prefixes and suffixes methods.
3.2 Association with Images
When teaching new words, teachers tend to ask students to draw a picture students have in their mind related to the new word. As I know, there are two kinds of associative schema. The first one is situational schema. Teachers can present those related words like “bowl, plate, dish, fork, spoon, chopstick” at the time teaching the new word “cupboard”. The scattered words are systematically put together. To demonstrate the move orientation is the second type. Take the word “fetch” for example. Teachers can teach students to use “ ” to express the orientation of “fetch”, choose “” to show the orientation of “ bring”, and adopt “” to demonstrate the direction of “take”. There is no doubt that words acquisition turns out to be easy through this way.
3.3 Association of Typical Usages
English words can change their shape and their grammatical values. Students need to know facts about word formation and how to twist words to fit different grammatical contexts. Thus the verb “run” has the participles “running” and “ran”, the present participle “running” can be used as an adjective and “run” can also be a none. There is a clear relationship between the words “death”, “dead”, “dying” and “die”.
Association of typical usage is a commonly used strategy. When teachers teach vocabulary, they present its antonym, synonym or polysemy that students have learned. It seems easier for the students to master the new words in this way than a pure vocabulary teaching. The aim of doing so is to help the students learn and remember the vocabulary in a subconscious way.
4. Conclusion
All the association methods discussed above in this paper are good methods for remembering English words. Yet, the author does not mean to disagree with all traditional vocabulary learning methods and take in all the new methods without discrimination. As far as I’m concerned, I think a teacher’s behavior and teaching methods usually have great influence on his students, especially those in middle schools; therefore, before he becomes a qualified teacher, he should possess influent professional knowledge and good teaching techniques, since vocabulary learning is an important part of English language learning. Whether a teacher can handle this process technically bears on the students’ language acquisition ability such as observation, analysis, creation, thinking and communication, and their language competence. If he tries to observe the rules working in the students’ learning processes, concern about their interest and psychological needs, and apply more scientific and efficient vocabulary learning techniques which are fit for them, he will succeed in arousing the students’ motives to learn English well and learn it in a relaxing and scientific way in which the large size of vocabulary is not the final teaching target, but the improvement of language competence. That is to say, not to let English become an accumulated knowledge, but a tool for communication.