ungrammatical utterances with accurate vocabulary than with accurate grammar and inaccurate vocabulary”. Nowadays, although most language teachers have realized its critical role played in language learning, the following problems still exist as well as interfere with the progress of vocabulary teaching.
1.1 Factors Affecting Vocabulary Acquisition
Frequency has been accorded a high level of significance in ELT for many years as a result of the use of word-frequency counting as a procedure informing syllabus and materials design. The rationale for this is quite simply that the most frequently occurring words in the English language will be those most useful to learners. The beginner level of many series of course books or the first stage of many series of graded readers will have a basic lexical syllabus formulated from the first 500 to 800 most frequently occurring words in English. The vocabulary lists which form the basis of syllabus specifications for much material currently in use relate back to work done as early as the 1930s and 1940s, later revised and adjusted. A well- used frequency list was that of West, which has some 2,000 headwords, each accompanied by its inflected forms, together with a list of common derivatives and compounds.
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Another way in which the concept of frequency has influenced ELT is in the repetition of words in texts. Repetition of words in materials can aid the process of lexical inference and has been used as a principle for constructing graded reading material for many years. Certainly, if learners are to be exposed to a wild range of word meanings and associations then it will be important for them to encounter words and associations then it will be important for them to encounter words in a variety of different situations through extensive reading and listening.
1.2 Challenges
Nowadays the English classes for students of non-English major are in relatively large scales. In the large class, teachers and students are faced with a lot of problems. For example , the teachers have difficulty in keeping eyes on every student’s vocabulary study; students have trouble in hearing the teacher clearly; students do not have enough chance to join in the classroom activities to practice target words which would surely activate their interests in English course; teachers do not have enough chance to help each less competent English learner and stimulate every student’s motivation of learning target words, for each student has different interests, different learning speeds and different English competences, which will spend teachers long time in giving consideration to them all. What is worse may lead to the
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results that good students would stop attending the class, for they may feel bored with the easy content of vocabulary taught in class, while less competent students may suggest a rather slower teaching speed. It is a big challenge for teachers to keep both good and less competent students active in class, which would ultimately bring out much barrier to classroom vocabulary teaching.
1.3 Attitudes of teachers Towards Vocabulary Teaching
Teachers’ attitudes towards vocabulary teaching would, to a great extent, influence the outcome of students’ vocabulary learning. Some teachers regard English vocabulary learning as the students’ own business. This would surely leave a dizzy vocabulary world to college students of non-English majors. Such as, we can hear sort of statements from students, such as “I am a slow learner in vocabulary,” “I am a fast forgetter speaking, in vocabulary” and “English vocabulary makes me dizzy” Generally students view vocabulary as a most critical but most difficult section in their language studies. They are eager to learn them so long as the teachers would like to help them with the correct and effective approaches. Nevertheless, many teachers view teaching vocabulary as a low-level intellectual activity unworthy of their full attention. The reason why they think so lies in the below. Many teachers try to equal the word teaching to mere word definition and spelling, or they directly give
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students word meanings instead of gradually guiding the students to imagine or associate the target words with outside world so as to help them effectively stored in their minds. It is due to the easy process of the explanation of word definition and spelling that some teachers think of word teaching as such a simple activity. Accordingly, they would leave vocabulary learning to students themselves instead of providing them with helpful and efficient teaching strategies.
This attitude would certainly result in the following consequences: studying English for about ten years through junior high school, high school and university, the outcome has been disappointing even where teachers have devoted much time to vocabulary teaching in ESL classes. Especially in countries where English is not the main language of communication, many of the daily used words have never been taught. As a result, the students are not good at listening, speaking and writing. Their spoken English are in such a poor condition that they are not able to communicate with native speakers. The English writings are full of mistakes, including a lot of Chinglish.
1.4 Improper Teaching Methodology about Vocabulary Teaching
Vocabulary learning strategies are able to give language teachers helpful information about how the students make out the appropriate vocabulary strategies in attempt to understand and memorize the new input presented in
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the language classroom. To put it another way, vocabulary learning strategies are good signs of how learners solve their problems on the to-learn words encountered in the process of language learning.
1.4.1 Single Word
During the English classes, some teachers have the target words taught single by single. This sentence contains two types of meaning. First, target words are taught independently rather than by means of connecting them with the network of associations, such as synonyms, antonyms or hyponyms, etc. Another aspect refers to words taught without the help of concept of “chunk”. “Chunk”, as a relatively new term, attracts many researchers’ attention in recent years. It involves fixed expressions as “commit a crime”, collocations like “raise capital”, institutionalized utterances as “There is a call for you. I will get it.” and sentence frames like “in the first place, and in the second,
next, additionally, furthermore, and finally” as well. The advantage of applying the “chunk” to vocabulary teaching is to assist students in forming a clear idea of referring to English vocabulary as a comprehensive whole instead of each separate word patched up together.
Only when vocabulary is taught through the concepts of association and chunks, can the students learn how to speak and use the right target words in appropriate situations.
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