谈英语词汇教学(1)(4)
2015-09-25 01:43
导读：Rote learning is a typical ineffective way. So it is important to make students aware that not all words are equally important and that effective ways of vocabulary learning help to reduce forgetting.
Rote learning is a typical ineffective way. So it is important to make students aware that not all words are equally important and that effective ways of vocabulary learning help to reduce forgetting. [6]
3. Select words
Learners need help in developing a large sight vocabulary, so that they may automatically access word meaning. However, it is fortunate that not all English words need to be learned. This is because not all words are equally useful. Students do not have time to learn all the words, nor do they have time to pay attention to too many words each time. It is important that vocabulary teachers have to focus on:
(1) Building the learner’s ‘start up’ or initial vocabulary.
(2) Developing the learner’s understanding of what learning words means.
(3) Showing the learner how to learn the words most effectively.
The final aim is to develop the learners as independent word learners. [7]
Before reaching the aim, teachers should carefully choose certain words to teach, with focus on the most frequent and useful words. Special attention should also be given to words which are difficult to learn.
3.1 What words to teach?
Research shows that learners should learn 2,000 most frequent words in English and about 3,000 word families to be good at English (‘Word family’ is a group of words that own the same meaning such as ‘care, careful, careless’ etc.). Teachers should concentrate on the most frequent and useful words first, as these words are the words that students will meet very often. Many teachers concentrate on rarer words assuming that the basic words like “take, put” are known. But those words are among the most troublesome, with their multiple meanings. Therefore, teachers should work very hard on the high frequency words.
3.2 Some criteria for selecting vocabulary.
Selecting words is not blind, it need criteria to limit its scope.
Table 2 Some criteria for selecting vocabulary
Criteria Definition
Range
Coverage
（科教论文网 Lw.nsEAc.com编辑整理） Frequency
Learnability
Language needs The extent to which a word occurs in the different types of texts
The capacity of a word to replace other words
The number of occurrences of a word in the target language
The extent to which a word can be learned without difficulty
The extent to which a word is regarded as ‘required’ by the learner in order to communicate. Source: Adapted from Teaching Vocabulary [8]
3.3 Four principles for selecting vocabulary
Selecting words also need principles.
(1) The words that native speaker usually use in many field is the words for learners to learn.
(2) Some words which are not usually and widely used, but it is certain that students always come across in study (such as experiment, graph, specimen etc.).
(3) The capacity of a word or phrases to replace other words or other phrases. For example, ‘immediately’ can take the place of ‘straight away, without delay, instantly, in a flash’ etc.
(4) Different words have different teaching difficulties. For example, “classroom is easier to teach than “humanism”. [9] There is no need for students to learn the chosen words in the same way. In fact, it is enough for some words to be mastered as the active voice, other words need changing into the passive voice.
