Vocabulary Teaching Strategies in College

張愛榮

Abstract: We all focus on the students abilities of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating in college teaching. But actually, it is nothing without vocabulary. Thus, vocabulary teaching is an essential part in English teaching. However, some traditional teaching takes vocabulary out from the context, which costs a lot of time and energy, but students are involved in the dull circle of memorizing to forgetting to memorizing again. Finally, they lose their patience on English learning and maybe give it up. In this paper, we discuss some vocabulary teaching strategies, so as to help the memorizing of vocabulary and enhance the efficiency of vocabulary teaching and learning.

Key words: vocabulary teaching;strategy;word formation

一、Introduction

Human beings language is based on the vocabulary,which consists of three basic language units —pronunciation,vocabulary and grammar. Grammar provides the overall patterns,and the vocabulary is the basic material to put into the patterns,cause there is no sentence,no essay,and even no language without vocabulary. As one of the famous English applied linguists Wilkins said “Without grammar very little can be conveyed,without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.”(Wilkins,1987) Therefore,to a great extent ,students ability of listening ,speaking ,reading ,writing and translating is all influenced by the vocabulary. Vocabulary teaching is a process ,but its aims are clear: not only make college students memorize words as much as possible ,but also make them master their skills of vocabulary memorizing and train their ability of guessing words meaning from contexts. In order to teach English effectively,strategies are very important.

二、Vocabulary knowledge

In vocabulary teaching researches,vocabulary knowledge can be divided into internal knowledge and external knowledge,including the definition or conceptual meaning,its grammar ,connotations,pragmatic rules and the socio-cultural message it carries. Vocabulary does not only refer to the single words but also the “chunks” such as phrases and idioms. Thus,integrated vocabulary teaching should include following parts:

1. Pronunciation and spelling

Standard pronunciation and correct spelling are the essential parts of vocabulary teaching and learning. The college students have to know what a word sounds like (pronunciation) and what it looks like (spelling). When teaching vocabulary,teachers should draw them attention to pronunciation and spelling together,and clarify the relationships between them.

2.Grammar

The grammar of new vocabulary will need to be taught if this is not obviously covered by general grammatical rules. An English word may have an unpredictable change of form in certain grammatical contexts or may have some idiosyncratic way of connecting with other words in sentences. For example ,when teaching a new verb ,teachers should give its past form if this verb is irregular (forbid,forbade),and teachers might note if it is transitive or intransitive. Similarly ,when teaching a noun,teachers need to present its plural form if the noun is irregular (criterion,criterria),or draw them attention to the fact that it has no plural at all (people).

3. Word formation

Vocabulary items,whether one-word or multi-word,can often be broken down into their component bits,and how these bits put together is another piece of useful information which may be worth teaching. If students know the meaning of sub-,un-,and -able,this will help them to guess the meaning of words like substandard,ungrateful and renewable.

三、Vocabulary teaching stra-tegies

The first step of vocabulary teaching is how to present new words,which is to introduce or show vocabularies to students in a certain way,including form,pronunciation,meaning,syntax feature and application. The aims of different presentations are to make students memorize vocabulary as much as possible.

Concise definition (as in a dictionary; often a super ordinate with qualification: for example,a cat is an animal which…)

Detailed description (of appearance,qualities…)

Examples ( hyponyms )

Illustration ( picture ,drawing ,object )

Demonstration (acting ,mime )

Context ( story or sentence in which the item occurs )

Synonyms

Opposites ( antonyms )

Translation

Associated ideas ,collocations

In addition,its very important to distinguish which words are high frequency and which are low frequency. The high frequency vocabulary could make the conversation fluently,while the low frequency vocabulary could make the expression accurately.

1. Expanding vocabulary by word formation

Although English has large vocabulary,its easy to find out regularity,because of roots,prefixes and suffixes. To the college students,they need to know the formation rules which include: compounding,derivation,conversion and abbreviation.

Compounding words are built by two words (two nouns,or a gerund and a noun,or a noun and a verb) to make one item,such as bathroom,follow-up. Derivation shows the relationship between roots and affixes (affix refers to group of letters or sounds,which is added to a word,and which changes the meaning or function of the word). For example,im-,non-,dis- all change the meaning of the word to its opposite: im+polite→ impolite (means “rude”),non+smoker→non-smoker (means “people who dont smoke”),dis+like→ dislike (means “not like”). The prefix changes the meaning of words,whereas the suffix changes the part of speech of words.

2. Creating mental linkages by association

When teaching vocabulary,the atmosphere of classroom setting must be active,its good to consolidate and enlarge students vocabulary. For example,teachers write a word tree in the center of the blackboard,and then ask students to brainstorm all the words they can think of that are connected with it.

The circle of associated items is in itself a meaningful context for the learning of new vocabulary; the focus is on the meaning of isolated items. Of course,teachers can use other sorts of stimulus-words or connections: put a prefix sub- in the center and invite the class to think of words that begin with it. Teachers should make good use of time in the classroom and provide chances of word consolidation as much as possible.