4.1.2 Interview 16

4.2 Impacts on the students 16

5. Conclusion 17

References 18

1. Introduction

1.1 Backgrounds

For most of Chinese students, learning English is definitely an enormous challenge. This is because that Chinese and English are vastly different languages from different typologies (Haynes, 1990; Wu, et al., 2013). The previous researches illustrate that Asian settlers to the United States, including those who first language was Mandarin, learned English less well than settlers from European countries (Jia, Aaronson, & Wu, 2002). Beyond the differences, learning English is difficult because English has a larger vocabulary than any other language. Moreover, English, reflecting various invasions, a colonial history, a willingness to take on all linguistic comers, draws words from a bewildering number of other languages (Sewell, 2008). 

During the exercitation, the author found that a great deal of students in junior high school have trouble in vocabulary learning and memory. Many Chinese students embrace tedious study practices, such as rote memorization of lists of words without using the words in context (Gan, Z. et al., 2004). It is common that English courses prescribe rote memorization of word lists (along with a text passage containing the words) as standard practice, and that the students complained about the tediousness of such practices (Smith, G. et al., 2013). With the forgetting or misunderstanding of words, the students always perform poorly in their assignments and examinations. As a result, they may lose their confidences and interests in English learning.

The present approaches of vocabulary teaching are boring and teachers do not use various flexible teaching approaches, which makes the classroom teaching too rigid to attract students’ interest in learning vocabulary. Teachers usually read and explain the words of a new unit before teaching and have dictation the next day to make sure students remember these words. Then, teachers can begin to teach the new unit and pay more attention to the texts and grammar. As words are taught in isolation without taking context into consideration, students can’t really understand what have been taught. Linguist Firth (1957) said “Each word, when used in a new context, is a new word.” Students just memorize the basic meaning but are unable to use words correctly, which brings barriers for students to improve their English ability. 

Moreover, teachers seldom introduce effective methods of vocabulary learning and retention which is important to improve the efficiency and quality of vocabulary learning, as a consequence, in practical vocabulary teaching, teachers pay little attention to making students learn how to memorize and master the words efficiently. In such circumstance, students find it difficult to learn vocabulary well. In addition, memorizing vocabulary mechanically and passively brings great burden to students to a large extent. Even worse, students have no strong self-consciousness and initiative of learning vocabulary.

According to the author’s interlocution with students and analysis, there are three typical attitudes among grade eight students in the secondary school. 

For most students, they agree with that vocabulary is very important in language learning. To a certain extent, the size of the vocabulary signifies the language level of a person. Listening, speaking, reading, writing are the basic language skills, and each of these skills are required to be supported by enough vocabulary. But it is quite difficult for them to learn and remember words or they can memorize the words after reciting then forget most of them afterwards. Furthermore, even these students remember the words; they are not able to use them correctly.