Chapter 1. Introduction

Since the beginning of economic globalization, people have realized thesignificance of the language that is used among the majority of the nations in theworld. Due to the great influence of the English-speaking countries, English has beenused almost all over the world. This language has been used in a variety of occasionssuch as international conferences, traveling in other countries, learning about foreignculture so on and so forth. In order to get used to the trend of globalization, peoplerealized the importance of learning English and made emitting efforts to grasp thelanguage. Due to the great gap between the Chinese and English, most Chinese hadgreat difficulty in learning the vocabularies and the pronunciations. Besides, it is verydifficult for Chinese learners to master the complex grammars and to speak thelanguage as if speaking the mother tongue. The resource of the difficulties in speakingEnglish is that Chinese have difficulties in learning the vocabularies as well as theusage of the words. Realizing such a fact, the English teachers started to attach greatsignificance of vocabulary teaching. In addition to the teachers, the department ofeducation also paid much attention to English teaching and required that Englishshould be taught as one of the most important subjects in middle and senior highschool. Besides, the perfect mark of English test in the entrance examination ofuniversity is 150 points so that both teachers and students regarded them as the mostimportant and difficult subject. Besides, due to the limitation of time in Englishclasses, students have limited access to English-speaking practice. As a result,students always complained that it is difficult to reach a high score in English testsand to speak English fluently. As a result, it is still of great significance to investigatemore efficient methods applicable for English teaching.

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Chapter 2. Literature Review

2.1 Previous ResearchesAbroad about Vocabulary Teaching

Before 19thcentury, there were no teaching methods that were used among alllanguage classes and the teachers then focused more on teaching students to readmore books in other languages, instead of communicating with others. At that time,grammar-translation method was more famous among language teachers. Applyingthis method, the teacher tended to follow the steps of reviewing words learned in thelast class, presenting new words, explaining grammars, analyzing the texts, reviewingthe teaching content and making assignment for homework. It is obvious that theteachers pay more attention to the teaching content, instead of the students, but thismethod was so influential that it is still used in today’s language classes.After 19thcentury, direct teaching method started to become famous. Thismethod refers to the one that the teachers make use of pictures or body languages topresent the meanings of words. This method was extremely useful for teachingobscure words since it helped language learners connect the words with the real world.As a result, even the obscure words could leave a deep impression on them.However, such a method was not useful when the teacher was required to teach someobscure words such as functional words. Even though direct method was not perfect,it was still one of the most important method employed in language teaching.

2.2 Previous Researches in China about Vocabulary Teaching

Compared with the western studies about vocabulary learning and teaching, thestudies about this topic in China are less creative but the advantages lies in that thestudies are more application-oriented and are even more useful for the languageteaching and learning. The vocabulary teaching in China started from the time whenthe English course was set up in Chinese schools. At the beginning, English learningis extremely difficult for Chinese learners since Chinese and English belonged todifferent linguistic branches: English belongs to the West-Germanic family whileChinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family. In order to improve the efficiency ofEnglish teaching, teachers taught students by means of translating method andteachers usually taught English following the steps of leading students to read Englishsentences, explaining the words in Chinese, introducing the usages, and doingexercises to practice using the words. The defects of that teaching method wasself-evident: teacher focused too much attention on translating the Englishexpressions into Chinese and ignored the pronunciation of the words. As a result, thestudents were mostly good at recognizing the English words and understanding themeanings of the expressions, but their oral English was mostly poor and often feelembarrassed when speaking, especially in public.In order to avoid such defects, English teachers in China started to bring in theaudio-lingual method. This was a method by which the teacher present the word usagein example sentences and add more speaking and listening exercises. Even though thisteaching method was more effective in improving learners’ oral English, it was stillfar from perfect since vocabulary teaching was not paid enough attention to.

Chapter 3. Methodology.................................15 

3.1 Experimental Method and the Subject..........................15 
3.2 Data Collection and ResultsAnalysis.................16
Chapter 4. Analysis and Discussion on Vocabulary Teaching in Senior highschools and Colleges.......34 
4.1 Verifying Methods of Presenting New Vocabularies.............................34 
4.2 Creating Context to Encourage Students Speaking English..................35 
4.3 Holding VariousAfter-schoolActivities................................................36 
4.4 Making Use of Emotional Education...............38 
4.5 Coordinating the English Teaching in College and Senior High Schools..........40 
Chapter 5. Summary ............................44 
5.1 Major Findings of This Research...................44
5.2 Limitations.......................49 
5.3 Suggestions for Researches in the Future........................50

Chapter 4. Analysis and Discussion on VocabularyTeaching in Senior high schools and Colleges

4.1 Verifying Methods of Presenting New Vocabularies

The reading method and situational method are muchmore efficient in improving students’ English proficiency, especially their reading,writing and speaking ability. However, it is still necessary to combine the twomethods with others. That is to say, if a teacher wants to present the meaning andusage of a notional word whose meaning is concrete, he should choose the directmethod to present it but make use of the reading methods to help the studentsconsolidate their memory of the word. However, if several words are often used in thesame sentence, it is better to choose the reading method so that the students couldremember all the words as a whole. As for the emotional method, it is special in that itis necessary method that all the teachers should never ignore. That is to say, a teachershould bear in mind that he plays the role of a guider in English class, instead of alecturer. Therefore, a teacher should attach more importance to students’ feeling andattitude toward English learning. If some students always keep quiet in class, ateacher should ask them to answer some simple questions and encourage them in time,instead of ignoring them. As for the students who is too confident, a teacher shouldalso remind them of the significance of being modesty and the necessity to learn more.In conclusion, only if an English teacher could make the best choices from theteaching methods, he could guarantee that the students could learn efficiently inEnglish class and make more progress in a shorter period of time.

4.2 Creating Context to Encourage Students Speaking English

On the one hand, the students could be encouraged by suchevaluation and improve themselves following the suggestion of their teacher. On theother hand, the teacher could get some clue about the advantages and disadvantages ofevery student so that he could make a proper teaching plan for each student. In suchactivities, the most important thing is to make sure that the students are motivated toshow their answers in English, instead of copying others’ answers. Therefore, it isnecessary to encourage different answers and opinions only if the student couldexplain his answer logically.Secondly, a teacher should also make adequate assignment for the students tocomplete after school. The content of the assignment should also be verified. Forinstance, the assignment could be an email written to a pen pal living in USA or otherEnglish-speaking countries. Besides, it is also a good choice to ask the students tomake a speech in front of their parents. Even though their parents may not understandtheir language, but they could still feel proud of their children’s courage to speakEnglish in public. Such assignments will be useful complement of successful Englishclasses and will change their attitude toward English homework.

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Chapter 5. Summary

5.1 Major Findings of This Research

In general, the English vocabulary teaching is advantageous in the quantity ofEnglish class so that the English teachers could present the knowledge about Englishvocabularies and grammar in details and lead the students to do more exercises.However, there are still some problems with such teaching activities such as that thestudents depend too much on the teaching of their teachers so that their ability to learnby themselves is much lower. Besides, the capability of the students to communicatewith others in English is inadequate since the teachers attach more significance to thestudents’score in the exams and ignore the students’oral English, which is not part ofthe entrance examination to colleges. Such teaching activities lead to a series ofproblems with the English proficiency of the students. At first, the students attachedtoo much significance with their score in the exams while ignored their ability toexpress themselves in English. In other words, the students made emitting efforts toachieve a higher scores in the English exam which has been regarded as one of themost difficult but important subjects for a senior high school students. In some cases,the students have tried their best to learn English and remember the English words,they still failed to achieve a satisfying score in the English exams. Therefore, they willlose their confidence in learning English and turn to some short cuts to guess thecorrect answers in exams such as summarizing the regulations by which the correctanswers appears. Such skills will do great harm to the improvement of students’English proficiency. Secondly, the students in senior high schools are more likely toignore the practice of their oral English so that they still failed to communicate withothers in English fluently even though they have learned adequate vocabularies.

5.2 Limitations

In this dissertation, the influence of various teaching methods on the students insenior high schools and universities is analyzed by means of making a series ofexperiments and interviews. The results of the experiments and the interviews revealthe necessity for the English teachers in senior high schools and universities toimprove their teaching proficiency. Even though such a dissertation will provide someuseful suggestions for the teachers to make up for the defects of the previous teachingactivities, there are still some limitations with this dissertation: at first, even thoughthe teaching methods chosen in the experiment are representative ones but there arestill some other methods that are not taken into consideration such as the method ofpractice by means of games which is mostly used in the teaching activities inkindergartens and primary schools. Secondly, even though the sample classes chosenin the experiments are representative, there are still large numbers of classes that arenot analyzed in this research. In order to make sure of the convincingness of theconclusion, the classes from senior high schools are composed of students whoseEnglish proficiency is different and the teachers are mostly experienced ones whocould get along well with the students. As for the classes from universities, thestudents are all non-English-majors so that the conclusions of the experiment couldaccount for the problems with the problems existing in the English learning of mostcollege students. Even though there are still some limitations with this research due tothe limit of time and space, the conclusion of this research could still be used as theevidence to prove the problems with the English teaching in senior high schools anduniversities. Nevertheless, it is still necessary to make more researches about theEnglish teaching in senior high schools and universities so that it is possible for thestudents to improve their English proficiency under the professional teaching.

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參考文獻(xiàn)（略）

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