The Teaching of Vocabulary for - - Middle School Students(

The Teaching of Vocabulary for Middle

School Students

A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts

Zhu jinjin

Under the Supervision of

Wang yongqing

Foreign Languages College Tianjin Normal University

March 2012

Contents

Abstract (English)……………………………………………………………………….…...1 Abstract (Chinese)…………………………………………………………………………...2 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..…3

Chapter 1 The Importance of Enlarging English Vocabulary…………………………….…..4 Chapter 2 Learning How to Learn English Vocabulary……………………………..…….....5

2.1 Immersion in Words…………………………………………………………..….5 2.2Learning to Guess the Possible Meaning from Word Spelling…………………...5 2.3Understanding the Word Meaning from Context…………………………...........6 2.4Expanding Vocabulary in a Steady and Systematical Way……………..………...7 Chapter 3 Some Methods for Memorizing Words………………...………………………....8

3.1 Repeating---the Way to Improve the Faculty of Memory………………….….…8 3.2Depending on Word-formation Rules…………………………...……………......8 3.3Analogy and Association…………………………………………………….……9 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….……10 References…………………………………………………………………..….11

Appendix…………………………………………………………………..………….....….12

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Abstract

English is getting more and more useful in our daily life and work. A rich vocabulary is indispensable to learners of English for better and efficient communication. In studying English, however, one of the most common problems students face is that they have a small vocabulary. A great majority of students think it is boring to remember too many words. It is, therefore, very important for English learners, especially beginners, to grasp the methods and skills of how to learn and memorize the enormous English words.

The paper discusses the importance of building up a large vocabulary for English learners and it explored the ways of learning vocabulary and of memorizing vocabulary as well. Learners need to learn how to guess the possible meaning from spelling and context, and expand the vocabulary in a steady and systematical way. For memorizing words, repeating is considered to be one of the most important way to improve the faculty of memory. Word-formation rules, analogy and association, may be of great help along with great perseverance.

For English learners, especially for beginners, these ways of learning vocabulary and ways of memorizing words may be indispensable in the long process of building up a large vocabulary.，enlarge their vocabulary is quite necessary. It can arouse the interest of study and improve their English levels.

Key words: English vocabulary、Memory、Word-formation、Analogy and association

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摘 要

英语在我们的日常生活、工作中变得越来越重要。而掌握丰富的词汇对于学习者来说是必不可少的。但在英语学习中，学生们所遇到的最普遍的一个问题却恰恰是词汇量不够的问题。大多数学生都认为记那么多的单词太枯燥无味。

因此，对于英语学习者来说，特别是初学者来说，掌握学习记忆大量词汇的方法和技巧是很重要的。这篇文章讨论了学习者建构大量词汇的重要性，并探讨了学习词汇和记忆词汇的方法。学习者应该掌握如何从词形和语境中猜测词义，循序渐进地扩大词汇量。对于词汇记忆而言，循环记忆、构词法则、类比和联想，再加上持之以恒的精神对学习者会受益无穷。

关键词：英语词汇、记忆、构词法、类比和联想

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Introduction

One of the most important problems facing learners of English is that they have not acquired enough words. As a result, some students gradually lose their interest in studying English. Those poor students complain that English words are too many to remember. Some report that they cannot use English words correctly. Others say that, due to their lack of vocabulary, they cannot follow the teacher or cannot complete the tasks in class. Little by little, some of them may lag behind in English and take a less active role in classroom activities. A few students even want to drop English.

It is true that it?s not easy to learn English, especially for students in a foreign country. Students are not in the favorable language environment of learning English. Neither do they acquire the correct methods of learning English. Consequently, many students grasp fewer words. But without enough words in mind, they may confront a lot of troubles in listening, speaking, reading and writing, let alone communicating with foreigners.

Helping the students, especially beginners, enlarge their vocabulary is quite necessary. It can arouse the interest of study and improve their English levels.

The paper begins with the importance of building up a large vocabulary for English learners. Then it explores the ways of learning vocabulary and of memorizing vocabulary in chapter two and three respectively.

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Chapter 1 The importance of enlarging English vocabulary

Nowadays, English is getting more and more important in our daily life and work. Almost every career and social activity needs English, such as foreign trade, science and technique research, sports games, culture, education, communication, broadcasting, traffic, military, and etc. That?s why there are so many people in the world who learn English now. In the last two decades, more and more people in China devote themselves to studying English. They work hard at it, and they study it with determination. Learning English is not only required by their lives and work, but meanwhile required by the reform and opening up in our country. It cater for not only their own benefits, but also for our country and the people?s benefits.

Vocabulary is the foundation for communication. It is unlikely for learners to express one?s idea clearly and communicate in English without any misunderstanding. Thus, learners need to pay much more attention to the importance of words.

An average educated adult native speakers of English has a vocabulary size of about from 15 to 20 thousand word families. To acquire such an impressive amount of vocabulary—tens of thousands of word families, is often considered as the greatest source of problems by most learners of English.

To junior middle school students, the beginners of English, their vocabulary is limited. These learners often complain that English words are too many to remember. Due to their lack of vocabulary, some cannot follow the teacher or cannot complete the tasks in class. Others even cannot pass the exams. As a result, learning and grasping more words is the most difficult for students.

Therefore, grasping more words and enlarging the vocabulary is the priority in the course of English study, which can help learners to improve their abilities of listening, speaking, reading, writing and even communicating.

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Chapter 2 Learning how to learn English vocabulary

It is very important for English learners to grasp the methods and skills of how to learn the enormous English vocabulary. 2.1 Immersion in words

All of words should be used frequently in listening, speaking, reading and writing when students are trying to learn words. In class, teachers must help students arouse a desire to store and remember words by constantly using them in class work or activities. What?s more, teachers need to provide students with activities (discussions, competitions or games) in which they can demonstrate what they know and learn from each other.

This does not necessarily mean “memorizing”, but emphasizes that such opportunities should be given to students to associate what they have just encountered with what they already know, so that they can build up facilitive semantic networks within their cognitive system.

Beginners in middle schools should be given some exercises of listening and reading and integrate the spelling with the pronunciation of words. From several words, phrases to a few sentences, students increase vocabulary continuously. They can remember more words by using them in all kinds of activities than remembering words by words. 2.2 Learning to guess the possible meaning from word spelling

Traditional English teaching and learning frequently only pay attention to the words used independently, one word one meaning. However, most English words, except only a few basic words, all come from the roots of Latin and Greek with the aids of prefixes and suffixes. Roots are foundation to form words, and prefixes and suffixes are elements. Learning the limited sum of roots, prefixes and suffixes, may help students, (beginners, in particular) realize that words are constructed of morphemes which share the burden of the meaning among them.

Though the exact meanings of a few words may not be guessed from the spellings themselves, the meanings of a number of words in English, at least part of the meaning, can be discovered if students have some knowledge about the structure of words.

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Beginners in middle schools should be taught to identify those roots, prefixes, and suffixes, thus assisting them in guessing the meaning of apparently new items and lightening the burden of learning so many words.

Exercises such as “topping and tailing”(that is, dividing off prefixes and suffixes) serve as an aid for students to discover the meanings of apparently unknown words. For example, “dis-” means ?not the converts of? in dislike, disappear; “-ful” means ?amount contained in produetive as in armful, pocketful;-age meaning ?meansure of process or state? , eg. coverage, wastage To students in middle school, such exercises are more interesting and profitable when trying hard to learn vocabulary.

Once they have become adept at distinguishing elements of meaning within a word, the meaning of many words may be easily extracted from the knowledge of word formation. Therefore, many new words would not be ?new? to them, even when they first meet them in learning.

Sensitivity to word formation also makes it easier to parts of speech to which words belong (e.g. communism, socialism, and capitalism are nouns, while socialize, civilize and merchandize are verbs).

Faced with countless words, beginners, equipped with the helpful knowledge, will feel eased and may even become more interested in learning vocabulary. 2.3 Understanding the word meaning from context

Knowing how to use all the tools available, for example, dictionaries (unilingual and bilingual), thesauruses, encyclopedias, should be a regular part of language learning. This does not mean that students will be encouraged to open a dictionary as soon as they encounter words whose meaning they don?t get clearly.

Students must learn how to discover new words for themselves. Part of their training from the very early stages will be in deducing the meaning of unfamiliar words from the context in which they are embedded. This is a normal process in expanding native language vocabulary. Learners of a foreign language, however, need to be trained to deduce the meaning of unknown words since they would turn to dictionaries for help whenever new words occur.

In classroom, teachers in middle school should encourage students by all kinds of

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activities to reduce the reliance on dictionaries and to learn to figure out the meaning of the unfamiliar words with the help of the context in which they occur. 2.4 Expanding vocabulary in a steady and systematical way.

Students must learn how to increase their own vocabulary steadily and systematically, rather than be overwhelmed by the numerous words in English .

Beginners should keep individual lists of new words that interest them and problem words which are continually tripping them up when starting to learn English words. These words should be written down in a short context as an aid to memory and also as a guide to use. If words are written down each time they are met but not recognized, the list will provide a kind of frequency indicator as well.

Constant rereading of the list, with immediate efforts to use the words in some appropriate way, either in communication with others or in internal dialogues, will help to impress these words upon the mind and facilitate storage for future usage . Teachers should encourage students to seek opportunities to hear and use the language outside of the class. Much hearing, reading and using of the language in informal settings, where the students are concerned, will increase familiarity with commonly used words and phrases, increasing the probability of long-term retention and of rapid retrieval when needed .

2.5 Understanding the formation of English words is also an important way for the students

English words can be divided into three kinds of words : dervertive words ;compound words and transformed words .The teachers should help the students Under the formation of English words is also an important way in the couse of learning words .

When we add some suffix to some words ,these words can be turned into new words .eg. happy----unhappy appear----disappear friend----friendly

Some words can be formed by two words or three words .eg. black-board basket-ball brother-in-law

Some words can be used as nouns ,.as verbs as ajectives and so on. eg. 1. Open (“open” is used as a noun ) the door .

2. Now the door is open (“open” is used as an ajective ) .

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Chapter 3 Some methods for memorizing words

There are some methods which facilitate the memorization of words. Students need to know these that may be helpful in committing vocabulary to long-term memory. 3.1 Repeating---the way to improve the faculty of memory

Research in psychology shows that the capability of keeping something in memory is related to the rates of stimulation. During a short while after the stimulation occurs, the mclarity is the highest and it will be decreased with the time passing by . So the efficient learning method for memorizing words should include many more times of new stimulations. Then whenever the new words are recovered, the time of keeping them in memory will be multiplied (Hu, 1990: 30).

In order to help memorize the new words, reading every day is necessary. Most words are learned from contexts. The more words students are exposed to, the larger vocabulary they will have. As we know, the vast majority of words are acquired in an incremental way through repeated exposures in context rather than be learned from direct instruction. Although oral language experience is of importance, it is written language that normally contains a higher proportion of moderate-to-low frequency words. Therefore, reading is normally the major vehicle for continued vocabulary acquisition.

Repeated exposures to words would be a good helper in memorizing new words. So students in middle school should be instructed to read a lot of materials which cover the selected topics after class. They need to learn to pay close attention to words they don?t know and try to figure out the meanings from contexts. If it impossible for inducing the meaning, then they look up the words in dictionaries. Since the materials are deliberately selected, many new words will occur repeatedly in different contexts. The time for keeping those newly-learned words in memory will be longer each time after rediscovering them. 3.2 Depending on word-formation rules

The isolated words are often memorized by beginners. As a result, learning and memorizing words become difficult and sometimes even a burden.

Word-formation rules make many words connected with one another and thus it can increase students` vocabulary rapidly. Word-formation in English mainly includes three

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methods, which are called compounding, derivation and conversion (Zhang, 1997: 45).

Students can make full use of the ways above to facilitate the memorization of words. The knowledge of word formation, such as word roots, prefixes, suffixes, synthesizing, conversion and other regulations may help students grasp as many words as possible. Memorizing words in this way, the words are not only remembered quickly, but also not easily forgotten.

3.3 Analogy and association

“Association” means to conceive of a new thing as being associated with a certain

given thing, while “analogy \which people transfer a certain familiar meaning or character to the objects alike.

Students in middle school have strong power of contrasting, analyzing and comparing.

So it is a good idea for them to memorize words through associating their synonyms, antonyms and etc.

The followings are examples of such methods. 1) Synonyms:

pretty-beautiful, factory-plant-mill-work, fine-nice-good, say-speak-tell-talk, finally-at-last-in the end, difficult-hard, etc.

2) Antonyms:

easy-difficult, clean-dirty, high-low, long-short, old-new, etc.

3) Words in similar forms:

dear, fear, hear near, year; bright, light, night, might; cold, hold, gold told, etc.

4) Homonyms:

hair, hare; here, hear; week, weak; our, hour; meet , meat, etc.

5) Words in the same semantic field:

dog, cat, mouse, hen cock, pig, camel, monkey, etc.

By using analogy and association, the words memorized by students will not be isolated any more. They are closely connected with one another in their mind, which will lengthen the time of memory.

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Conclusion

Vocabulary is the foundation in studying a language. Basic to communication, vocabulary is often considered as the greatest source of problems by most second language learners. How to develop an extensive vocabulary presents a major challenge to them.

Some important ways of learning vocabulary will be a great help to beginners. New

words should be used frequently in listening, speaking, reading and writing when students are trying to learn words. Guess the possible meaning from word spelling and from context may bring about benefit as well. Students should expand vocabulary in a steady and systematical way. In order to commit the newly-learned words to memory, some methods can be adopted, i.e. repeating, word-formation rules, analogy and association and so on.

For English learners, especially for beginners, these ways of learning vocabulary and

ways of memorizing words may be indispensable in the long process of building up a large vocabulary.

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References

Chen Xuhua , A Handbook for Instant Superior Teaching Methods. Hebei Educational Press,

1989.

Chen Xuhua & Shi Meizhou, A Handbook for Instant Superior Vocabulary. Hubei

Education Press, 1987

George Yule , The Study of Language. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press，

2000.

Sheard, J. A. The words we use. London Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Zhang Jian, Selected Words and Phrases from English Language Newspapers and

Magazines, Shanghai Word Books Publishing House, 1998.

Chen Longan陈龙安.《创造性思维与教学》.北京：中国轻工业出版社,1996. Hu Chundong胡春洞.《英语教学法》.内蒙古：高等教育出版社,1990. Wang Rongpei汪榕培.《英语词汇学教程》.上海：上海外语教育出版社,1997. Zhang Weiyou张维友.《现代英语词汇学》.北京：外语教学与研究出版社,1997.

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Appendix

Lesson 34

Teaching aims:

1. Words: movie, gas, realize, jam, nowadays

2. Phrases: think of, tie by, to it?s east, so that, in the past years, need doing, as early as, care

for, rush hour, be filled with, as well as, most importantly, instead of, move to,

3. Grammar: Revise the Passive Voice Skills:

1. Let the students get the main idea of this passage. 2. Discuss different ways to make the air better 3. Learn to care for their living environment Tools:

A recorder tape, a small blackboard, some papers Language focus:

1. A lot of work has been done to improve the air in the past years, though much still need doing.

2. Later on, cars were made to drive with cleaner petrol. Teaching procedures:

I. Showing the teaching aims II. Revision

1. The teacher will ask the students to recite the dialogue of Lesson 34. Students can say it in pairs.

2. Then teach the new words and read the new words three times. Let them remember the words.

III. Leading in

The teacher takes out of a map, asks: “which country?” The students answer: “America “

The teacher: People always say that America is a good place. What cities would you like to

visit?

The students: New York, Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles.

The teacher: Los Angels means “city of angels”. Why ? Do you want to know more about

Los Angeles? Today we will learn Lesson 34.

IV. Listening and reading

Put up the small blackboard, ask one student to read the questions. Then play the tape. The questions:

1. Where is the city of Los Angeles?

2. Which places do the people living Los Angeles come from? 3. Dose LA often have good weather?

4. Why can?t people sometimes see the mountains nearby? 5. Has the air been improved in the past years? 6. What is the air like now in LA?

Then play the tape again, let the students listen and read after it loudly.

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The students can discuss the questions with their partners. The teacher can help them answer the questions.

Students read the text one by one. Pay attention to the words and the pronunciation. V. Teaching language focus:

The students work in groups. Understand the text and find out the important phrases. While the students are studying together, the teacher can look around and help them understand the meaning.

After the students finish it, the teacher asks some of them to write the phrases on the blackboard and explain the meaning. When they are in trouble, the teacher explains it to them.

Let the students grasp the following phrases and notes.

1. think of ------ think about think over 2. lie by --------

lie—lay---- lain ----lying lay ---laid ---laid----laying 3. to it?s east

Showing the direction can use the words “ to/ on /in”

A: ○○ B: ○ ○ C: ▼ on to in ---Tianjin is in the north of China. ---Shannghai is to the south of Tianjin. ---Guanchang is on the west of Xiazhuang.

4. in the past thirty years: during the last thirty years 5. sth. need doing: sth. needs to be done sb. need to do

---I need to mend my bike. My bike needs mending. 6. must---may---can?t

---She must be in the classroom. She can?t be at home. 7. as early as------as well as

8. care for ----look after ---take care of 9. rush hour

10. be filled with -----be full of

The students read the phrases which they have found out, remember them as soon as possible. VI. Grammar

The students find out where the Passive Voice is used in pairs. From the third paragraph, ask some students to read the sentences. Revise the form of the Passive Voice. Explain the difficult places.

Note: Cars were made to drive with cleaner petrol.

make sb. / sth. do sth ---------sb. / sth. be made to do see sb. do -----------sb. be seen to do

hear sb. do ----------------- sb. be heard to do have sb. do ---------------sb. be had to do

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e.g. They make the boy work all day--- (change into the Passive Voice) The boy is made to work all day .

VII. Consolidation

The teacher shows the teaching aims to the class. The students look carefully and remember them. Then read phrases together. Get the students to ask and answer .let them really understand the passage. VIII. Practice

Hand out the exercises, the students look at the papers and do exercise 1&2. After finishing the problems they can check the answers each other. The teacher helps them understand and use the phrases.

Part 1: Translate these phrases

1) during the 1970s ______ 2) need doing ______ 3) later on ______ 4) as early as1953 ______ 5) care for ______ 6) in a hurry______ 7) leave work ______8) rush hour ______ 9) as well as______

10) be made to do______11) think of ______12) the second largest city______ Part 2: Choosing the best answer.

1) Its western part lies_the Pacific Ocean. A. in B. on C. to D. by 2) The bike needs______.

A. mend B. to mend C. mending D. to mends 3) The air in Beijing ______in the past few years.

A. has improved B. has been improved C. has improving 4) ______a cold winter morning she left for Japan. A. in B. on C. at D. to

5) Los Angeles is the___ largest city in the USA. A. two B. second C. twice

6) ______he was tired , ______ he still worked hard. A. Though, but B. Although, / C. Though , and

7) When most people mention Hollywood, they movies. A. think about B. think of C. think over

8) Japan lies the east of China, India lies the south of China. A. on , to B. to ,on C. in , on D. to ,in

9) He moved to the front _he could hear her clearly. A. that B. so that C. so---- that

10) The day is _cold _we put on warm clothes. A. such, that B. too , to C. so , that

11) It?s 9:00. The teacher be in the school, she_ be at home. A. must ,mustn?t B. must , can?t C. may , mustn?t 12) The boy is made to school early today. A. go B. gone C. to go D. going

IX. Homework

1.Discuss how to improve the air and make up a dialogue. 2.Do exercise 1-2 in workbook. 3.Retell the text.

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