Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Importance of Vocabulary Learning and Teaching
Vocabulary is a fundamental building block of language andvocabulary teaching is an indispensable part of English teachingembodied in teaching listening, speaking, reading and writing. Accordingto Zimmerman, “Vocabulary is central to language and of criticalimportance to the typical language learner” (1997: 5-19). Wlkins has saidthat without grammar very little information can be conveyed, withoutvocabulary nothing can be conveyed and that has pointed out theimportance of vocabulary learning. Vocabulary learning is the central taskfor language acquisition and all the language abilities such as listening,speaking, reading, writing and translation can not be detached withvocabulary. A quotation by Hatch (1983, p.74) further illustrates thecentrality of words to both acquisition and use, “It is the lexical level thatadult second language students claim is the most important. When ourfirst goal is communication, when we have little of the new language at our command, it is the lexicon that is crucial. The word will make basiccommunication possible.”Since vocabulary is essential to language and crucially important forsecond language learners, teachers and researchers have been alwaystrying to find efficient ways in the teaching of vocabulary. For Chinesestudents, English vocabulary has long been their big headache. Theyspend a lot of time in learning vocabulary. We often hear such complaint,“I spend most time learning vocabulary, but the result is far fromsatisfactory.” Relevant facts show that vocabulary teaching is timeconsuming and inefficient, so it is necessary to find a better vocabularyteaching approach to help the students to learn vocabulary effectively.
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1.2 Significance and Purpose of the Study
At present, CET4 requires the non-English major undergraduates toknow 4500 words and 700 phrases to meet the basic vocabulary level.British COBUILD Dictionary has 6600 core English words. Laufer (1989)thought that a minimum of 5,000 words is necessary for all Englishlearners. If one can be in charge of 9,000 words, he or she just can get the70% correct rate of understanding. It is easy to see from these figures thatthere is an urgent need to expand the vocabulary of Chinese collegestudents. The normal college English teaching and learning can not meetthe need of English communication. There are some problems in thestrategies of learning English for Chinese students. Many college studentsare not interested in learning English vocabulary and their English levelsare difficult to improve.Most of the college students learn vocabulary by rote according tothe vocabulary lists and rote-learning lacks selectivity and flexibility.Rote-learning for beginners may be an effective way to strengthenmemory, but the vocabulary of a language is not piled up by isolatedwords irregularly. Many college students like to use the simple andconvenient vocabulary manual or the convenient electronic dictionary torecite vocabulary. However, there are only English word entries in themanual book or the electronic dictionary, and no English interpretationand the example sentence of the word.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Vocabulary Knowledge
According to Diamond and Gutlohn (2017), vocabulary is theknowledge of words and word meanings. Vocabula，英语论文，英语论文
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