Discussion on English Vocabulary Teaching in Higher ?Vocational College

Abstract： Mastering vocabulary is one of the key factors for learning a language. Therefore, how to teach and help students acquire vocabulary is worth researching for every English teacher. This paper mainly provides some effective ways of teaching vocabulary and discusses how to implement these methods in higher vocational English teaching.

Key words：vocabulary；effective；higher vocational English teaching

It’s clearly stated in English teaching curriculum of the higher vocational college that the prescribed recognition vocabulary for students is 3400,including 2000 active vocabulary . However, many English teachers find vocabulary difficult to teach and students find it not easy to learn. Here, I’d like to sum up my own experience and to provide some effective ways of vocabulary teaching.

Ⅰ. Arousing students’ interest

According to psychology, anyone will have a powerful retention of what he’s interested in. Therefore, sometimes，to arouse students’ interest in the word to be memorized achieves twice the result with half the effort. In my practical teaching, I’ve used a story to introduce the new word “obese”. The story goes as follows: One day，an obese lady wanted to know her weight，so she stepped on a scale and the scale said, “One person at a time, please.” It’s very easy for students to get to know that the word “obese” means “very fat”. Then I pointed out that this word is negative and if someone is obese, he’s unhealthy at the same time. In a word, English teachers should use a variety of strategies to make vocabulary teaching more interesting.

П. Teaching new words in context

A linguist has said, “Each word when used in a new context is a new word.” The same word may have different meanings and usages in different contexts. For instance, the noun “spring” means “the season between winter and summer” in the sentence “It was a cold day in early spring”. While in the sentence “I sprang out of bed and rushed to windows”, it’s a verb, means “to move suddenly”. The meaning of the word is defined by the context. Teachers should set a context in accordance with students’ knowledge in hand and guide them to understand the exact meanings of new words in context.

Ш. Analysis of word formation

We can find many words in English are formed from a set of Latin or Greek roots with different prefixes and suffixes. For example, depose, transpose have the same Latin root “pose”, meas “to put”. If you know the meanings and functions of the prefixes “de-”, “trans-”，then it’s not difficult for you to make out the meaning of these words. “Depose” means“to put off the throne”in the sentence “The king was deposed by his own son”. “Transpose”means“to put into an appropriate form”. （eg. She transposed the music for the flute.） Therefore, one of the best approaches for students to learn such words is to understand their formation.

Ⅳ.Developing students’ good reading habits

Many English learners feel that the words they can easily understand and remember longer are those they learn from reading. Why? One main reason is that reading makes a very deep impression of the words on them. Suppose you are an English learner， you’re suddenly hindered by a new word which is important to your understanding of the plot when you’re reading an English novel，so you’re much impressed and you want to know it very much. Once you’ve got its meaning, you won’t forget these words easily. As English teachers, we should develop students’ good reading habits, suggest them read many different and lively types of materials and read often.

In the above， I have given my own view about what vocabulary teaching should be. I hope these methods in vocabulary teaching will be of some help to us English teachers.