II。Importance and content of vocabulary teaching

2。1 Importance of vocabulary teaching 

    Language is the instrument of communication。 A language involves three elements: pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar。 Pronunciation is the vocal carrier of a language。 In the term of vocabulary, it is the vocal form of it。 Grammar is something structural to make vocabulary meaningful, it is a set of innate rules with which vocabulary can convey meaning in the form of sentences。 It goes together with the use of vocabulary。 It is obvious that vocabulary is the most essential and liveliest part of the three elements and it is a factor which is most involved in communication。 Vocabulary teaching is at the heart of developing proficiency and achieving competence in the target language。 Vocabulary acquisition is the key point in middle school English studying and it is advisable for the teacher to attach importance to vocabulary teaching。 But many middle school students in China find it difficult to learn vocabulary efficiently。 For most English learners, vocabulary has long been the most difficult part in learning as well as the biggest headache on which they spend too much time。 What’s more, in the April of 2009, the new English course standard for middle school was announced。 The students’ English ability of middle school in China was required higher than before。 Students in middle school were asked not only to master words in English course syllabus for middle school but also to grasp lots of vocational words as well as professional phrases and sentences。 This is very difficult for most students in middle school because their English level is limited。 And in middle schools, it is general that English teachers can use a lot of time to explain new words in class but they seldom teach students how to learn vocabulary in effective way。 As for students, they always can not learn new words by heart and consistently forget learned words。 So, in schools, teachers and students should pay much more attention to vocabulary study and spend more class time working on vocabulary for efficient English learning and teaching。 In English teaching, especially in high schools, if vocabulary is centered and emphasized, the problem of“time-consuming and poorly-efficient”, English teaching will be solved because qualified acquisition of the vocabulary of students absolutely wipe off the biggest obstacle ---vocabulary。 The more vocabulary students acquire at primary stage of English study, the more easily and faster students develop other aspects of English study in future years, such as the development of grammar, listening, speaking, reading and writing, and the enrichment of English culture knowledge。 Vocabulary even has effect on being more intelligent in learners’ life as well as in education。 Hence vocabulary teaching must be a significant and strenuous task through the whole process of English teaching。论文网

2。2 History of vocabulary teaching

A。    Grammar Translation Approach

Grammar Translation, an extension of the approach used to teach classical languages to the teaching of modern languages, dominated foreign language teaching from the 1840s to the 1940s。 In its modified form, this approach continues to be widely used in some parts of the world today。 The fundamental goal of learning a foreign language in Grammar Translation Approach is to be able to read its literature。 In order to do so, students are expected to learn the grammatical rules and vocabulary of the target language using bilingual word lists。 It seems that the advocates of this approach had chosen the principles of Faculty Psychology as the basis for their learning theory (Chastain, 1988)。 It was thought that memorizing vocabulary items, grammatical rules, and translation would provide language learners with useful mental exercise, which would enhance their intellectual growth。 Although the prescriptive grammatical rules and their exceptions formulated by traditional grammarians were taught in this approach, it lacked a justified theory of language or learning (Richards & Rodgers, 2003)。