论文部分内容阅读
【Abstract】 This paper expounds the point of view that word teaching should be integrated with grammar, syntax and discourse in coordination with the training of communicative skills and relearning of former words.
【Key words】 integrative approach ,vocabulary teaching
To the students who learn English as a foreign language, word forgetting is always the toughest. A great majority of students make painfully slow progress just because of it. Aural-oral deficiency in English is high. More than 80% of the students in a classroom are ‘deaf-mute’ learners. They know the Chinese equivalents of English words but can’t speak when talking or understand while listening. And frequent use of wrong words makes almost every student embarrassed and puzzled. Some teachers of English attribute these to the insufficient communicative output practice in the classroom and others complain there is no English-specking environment in China. Objectively, they are both right. But in my teaching experience, the problems may have more to do with the ways in while words are taught. This paper advances the point of view that an integrative approach should be used to teach lexical items in the new textbooks. The reasons for using this approach are discussed and strategies for lexical presentation and internalization are described.
I. The Integrative Approach to Vocabulary Teaching
This approach calls for vocabulary teaching to be contextualized and integrated with grammar, syntax and discourse in coordination with the training of communicative skills and relearning of old words. If word learning involves a range of skills, the word should be taught in an integrated approach, which covers the four skills. This approach can be carried out in two ways. One is that teachers of the general English course should implement the integrative principles of language teaching and use different skills in the development of vocabulary. Such as teachers of listening and speaking should also attend to students’ vocabulary development through other skills. By using the integrated approach, teachers can raise students’ consciousness of the style and register words in different contexts. Presentation of a word though different channels can also satisfy students’ different learning styles and reinforce the mastery of a word. Word teaching is not a linear isolated process but a branching compatible one. Teaching a word is not just to show learners how to pronounce it, to spell it and what it means, but to develop their lexical competence: “learners not only know the sound, form and bilingual meaning of a word but also know what appear to mean the same; what other words derive from it; what kinds of associative links it has with other items in the lexicon; how it behaves systematically and just as importantly, its limitations of use according to situational functions”. Words should be taught in such a memorable way that a deep impression can be left in learners’ minds. Words will not be able to be ultimately internalized until they have been repeated and exploited many times.
II. Strategies for Word Presentation
1. Before teaching
When in a dialogue or text there are too many new words for learners, those words which will hinder them from understanding the main idea of the dialogue/text may be elicited at the warming-up stage of the discourse with the aid of pictures (stick figure and wall charts), demonstration (mine, action and gesture), contrast, enumeration or explanation.
2. Guessing
It would be better to encourage learners to guess those words whose meaning can be worked out from the context, for inferring is a useful communicative skill. The guessing can be done from word formation, structural clues, clues of definition, inference clues from the discourse, and the relationship between the clauses/sentences containing the unknown word and other neighboring sentences/paragraphs. Feedback should be carried put to check the guessing as soon as the listening/reading task is over.
3. Post-teaching
When in a dialogue/text there are new words that will not prevent learners from following the coherent stream of the ideas of the discourse, they may be semanticized after learners have grasped the gist of the material. So it is with the new words left unknown to learners after the presented depends on the aptitude, English proficiency level and existing bilingual background knowledge of learners as well as the type of a word: whether it is passive or active. Some may be given a brief explanation or translation in relearning the discourse. Others may be self-studied by consulting English-Chinese dictionaries.
III. Strategies for word internalization
1. Prompt consolidation
As soon as the meaning of a word has been made clear, learners are promptly guided to explore, experience and visualize the use of the word through relearning the text in which it appears, the interrelation between sound, spelling and meaning of the word, the grammatical and syntactic structure in which the word belongs, as well as its collocation, denotation, connotation, word grammar, frequency and register. After this, learners are encouraged to imitate and try the use of the word in a variety of vocabulary-oriented output activities. Different amounts of time and care should be devoted to different-skilled words, and four-skilled words, and four-skilled words should be committed to learners’ memory in the form of common sentence structures, with which learners can express themselves in English even without thinking when the scene calls.
2. Systematic Intensification
In order to avoid forgetting and decaying, some time may be devoted to frequent lexical revision in the classroom. While we are learning lesson 2.we deliberately go over some learned words in lesson 1. This can go on and on like a free-flowing river so that old words remain ‘alive’ in learners’ minds. Besides, as lessons move on, some words which are similar in one way or another will come up. By this time, these associated words may be collected and sorted into groups according to phonologic associations, semantic sets, situational sets, word formation or syntactic sets so that a clearer lexical network will be woven in learners’ All groupings should be relearned and differentiated in a way as meaningful and valuable as possible in a variety of task-based activities.
3. Random Activation
This means seizing every change and opportunity to activate old words in and out of the classroom. As teachers, we should make full use of learned works to present and explain new ones. In this way new words can be easily remembered and old ones can be brushed up. Furthermore, learners should be encouraged to use English as often as possible. They will talk with their peers in and after class. If they cannot express themselves completely in English, they may talk in a bilingual mixture. They will monologue in English what they are doing or thinking of when there is nobody to keep a daily in English and Chinese. Only trough-using words in a rich variety of communication situations can they be internalized.
Without grammar little can be conveyed and without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed, Vocabulary teaching and learning, playing a key role in mastering a foreign language, is the central task in any English language class. As a person’s vocabulary consists of active and passive words, the integrative approach highlights the concept of adaptability and flexibility in words should be taught differently. Owing to the limited exposure to English in China, internalization can not be accomplished in one move. Learned words have to be systematically recycled thought a variety of communicative interactions before they are internalized.
【Key words】 integrative approach ,vocabulary teaching
To the students who learn English as a foreign language, word forgetting is always the toughest. A great majority of students make painfully slow progress just because of it. Aural-oral deficiency in English is high. More than 80% of the students in a classroom are ‘deaf-mute’ learners. They know the Chinese equivalents of English words but can’t speak when talking or understand while listening. And frequent use of wrong words makes almost every student embarrassed and puzzled. Some teachers of English attribute these to the insufficient communicative output practice in the classroom and others complain there is no English-specking environment in China. Objectively, they are both right. But in my teaching experience, the problems may have more to do with the ways in while words are taught. This paper advances the point of view that an integrative approach should be used to teach lexical items in the new textbooks. The reasons for using this approach are discussed and strategies for lexical presentation and internalization are described.
I. The Integrative Approach to Vocabulary Teaching
This approach calls for vocabulary teaching to be contextualized and integrated with grammar, syntax and discourse in coordination with the training of communicative skills and relearning of old words. If word learning involves a range of skills, the word should be taught in an integrated approach, which covers the four skills. This approach can be carried out in two ways. One is that teachers of the general English course should implement the integrative principles of language teaching and use different skills in the development of vocabulary. Such as teachers of listening and speaking should also attend to students’ vocabulary development through other skills. By using the integrated approach, teachers can raise students’ consciousness of the style and register words in different contexts. Presentation of a word though different channels can also satisfy students’ different learning styles and reinforce the mastery of a word. Word teaching is not a linear isolated process but a branching compatible one. Teaching a word is not just to show learners how to pronounce it, to spell it and what it means, but to develop their lexical competence: “learners not only know the sound, form and bilingual meaning of a word but also know what appear to mean the same; what other words derive from it; what kinds of associative links it has with other items in the lexicon; how it behaves systematically and just as importantly, its limitations of use according to situational functions”. Words should be taught in such a memorable way that a deep impression can be left in learners’ minds. Words will not be able to be ultimately internalized until they have been repeated and exploited many times.
II. Strategies for Word Presentation
1. Before teaching
When in a dialogue or text there are too many new words for learners, those words which will hinder them from understanding the main idea of the dialogue/text may be elicited at the warming-up stage of the discourse with the aid of pictures (stick figure and wall charts), demonstration (mine, action and gesture), contrast, enumeration or explanation.
2. Guessing
It would be better to encourage learners to guess those words whose meaning can be worked out from the context, for inferring is a useful communicative skill. The guessing can be done from word formation, structural clues, clues of definition, inference clues from the discourse, and the relationship between the clauses/sentences containing the unknown word and other neighboring sentences/paragraphs. Feedback should be carried put to check the guessing as soon as the listening/reading task is over.
3. Post-teaching
When in a dialogue/text there are new words that will not prevent learners from following the coherent stream of the ideas of the discourse, they may be semanticized after learners have grasped the gist of the material. So it is with the new words left unknown to learners after the presented depends on the aptitude, English proficiency level and existing bilingual background knowledge of learners as well as the type of a word: whether it is passive or active. Some may be given a brief explanation or translation in relearning the discourse. Others may be self-studied by consulting English-Chinese dictionaries.
III. Strategies for word internalization
1. Prompt consolidation
As soon as the meaning of a word has been made clear, learners are promptly guided to explore, experience and visualize the use of the word through relearning the text in which it appears, the interrelation between sound, spelling and meaning of the word, the grammatical and syntactic structure in which the word belongs, as well as its collocation, denotation, connotation, word grammar, frequency and register. After this, learners are encouraged to imitate and try the use of the word in a variety of vocabulary-oriented output activities. Different amounts of time and care should be devoted to different-skilled words, and four-skilled words, and four-skilled words should be committed to learners’ memory in the form of common sentence structures, with which learners can express themselves in English even without thinking when the scene calls.
2. Systematic Intensification
In order to avoid forgetting and decaying, some time may be devoted to frequent lexical revision in the classroom. While we are learning lesson 2.we deliberately go over some learned words in lesson 1. This can go on and on like a free-flowing river so that old words remain ‘alive’ in learners’ minds. Besides, as lessons move on, some words which are similar in one way or another will come up. By this time, these associated words may be collected and sorted into groups according to phonologic associations, semantic sets, situational sets, word formation or syntactic sets so that a clearer lexical network will be woven in learners’ All groupings should be relearned and differentiated in a way as meaningful and valuable as possible in a variety of task-based activities.
3. Random Activation
This means seizing every change and opportunity to activate old words in and out of the classroom. As teachers, we should make full use of learned works to present and explain new ones. In this way new words can be easily remembered and old ones can be brushed up. Furthermore, learners should be encouraged to use English as often as possible. They will talk with their peers in and after class. If they cannot express themselves completely in English, they may talk in a bilingual mixture. They will monologue in English what they are doing or thinking of when there is nobody to keep a daily in English and Chinese. Only trough-using words in a rich variety of communication situations can they be internalized.
Without grammar little can be conveyed and without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed, Vocabulary teaching and learning, playing a key role in mastering a foreign language, is the central task in any English language class. As a person’s vocabulary consists of active and passive words, the integrative approach highlights the concept of adaptability and flexibility in words should be taught differently. Owing to the limited exposure to English in China, internalization can not be accomplished in one move. Learned words have to be systematically recycled thought a variety of communicative interactions before they are internalized.