1. 1 The general situation of English vocabulary learning
It is generally recognized that vocabulary is a prime part of language learning. What is vocabulary to a language is what a brick to a skyscraper. Both are the most elemental part of a whole. Vocabulary is also the carrier of our thoughts. It is the key to comprehension and communication. The size of vocabulary, to some extent, can influence learner’s performance in English learning. It is apparent that acquiring an adequate vocabulary is of critical importance to language learners. Therefore, it is understandable and inevitable to raise the standard of vocabulary storage. According to the English Curricular Criteria for Senior Middle School, students are now required to master a wide range of vocabulary. The basic vocabulary storage for the Senior Middle School students is 3,000 words and those who are top in English learning need to have a vocabulary storage of 5,000 [3]. This new standard shows that vocabulary has taken a predominant place in English learning.
Though both teachers and students have reached an agreement that vocabulary is a prime part of English learning, they cannot help but view it as the most serious headache too. For some teachers, they have the tendency to think that vocabulary teaching is a low-level intellectual activity as every new word in the textbook is accompanied by phonetic symbol and Chinese meaning, so they usually leave the task of vocabulary learning for the students themselves. For other teachers, they just present various aspects of a word, such as the pronunciation ,spelling, synonyms, antonyms and hyponyms etc. This kind of vocabulary teaching makes students frustrated and refuse to memorize words mechanically. For the students, without good vocabulary learning skills and teacher’s guidance, they just “read the textbook, the new words and their corresponding Chinese equivalents, rules for hanging these together plus sample usages [4]” only to find themselves totally lost in such a sea of words, complaining that it is hard to remember words or to use words correctly. Actually, there are some factors constraining the level of achievement by the learners. Nation (2002) summarizes that the major characteristic of English vocabulary is that it is very large. That is to say the learning load is heavy. Second, English vocabulary consists of layers of words including Anglo-Saxon in origin, French, Latin and Greek, contributing to the complexity of it. Third, English vocabulary contains rare and unusual words which are not transparent and easy to understand. What’ more, English has very different vocabulary registers for special areas of discourse. Last, learners should use words in right context; otherwise they might be completely misunderstood [5]. In view of the factors mentioned above, Chinese students, in spite of their great effort in learning vocabulary, always feel that English words are “difficult to learn, hard to memorize and easy to forget”.[6] In order to change this situation, now it needs both the efforts from the teachers and the students to forward vocabulary learning. It is the primary task for the students to develop a set of vocabulary learning strategies to orient at their study.
1. 2 The introduction of vocabulary learning strategies
As effectiveness and efficiency become increasing popular, learning strategies have become a major concern for researchers devoted to this field. So far learning strategies have been classified by many scholars, such as Rubin, O’Malley& Chamot, Oxford, Stern, Wen Qiufang. As “O’Malley& Chamot’s research centers on Senior Middle School students” [7] whose English learning are still at an early stage and who need some useful learning strategies to facilitate their English learning, their classification is adopted in this paper.
O’Malley divide language learning strategies into three main subcategories: metacognitive strategy, cognitive strategy and socioaffective strategy. Metacognitive is a term used in information-processing theory to indicate an “executive” function, strategies that involve planning for learning, thinking about the learning process as it is taking place, monitoring of one’s production or comprehension, and evaluating learning after an activity is completed. Cognitive strategies are more limited to specific learning tasks and involve more direct manipulation of the learning material itself. Socioaffective strategies have to do with social-mediating activity and transacting with others [8]. This definition and classification is reasonable, comprehensive and it has received great popularity among people. Learning strategies introduction is immediately widely spread around the world. Learning strategies introduction can help all the students of English become better learners. In addition, skill in using learning strategies assists students in becoming independent, confident learners. Finally, students become more motivated as they begin to understand the relationship between their use of strategies and success in learning English [9]. Learning strategies play an important role in enhancing learning effectiveness. Based on the classification by O’Malley & Chamot, all the sub-strategies are put forward by taking the vocabulary learning into full consideration.
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