Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
In recent years, vocabulary knowledge has been a hot topic in the discussion of language teaching inChina. In two months’teaching in junior high school, the writer found that vocabulary is a very outstandingitem in students’ English textbook learning. To a large degree,ａjustified vocabulary design in the textbookmay reflect the textbook’ s quality. The vocabulary activities in the textbook design provide the studentswith all kinds of contexts in English vocabulary learning which are very effective to both students’ andteachers’English learning.In junior high schools, vocabulary is a significant part in both English teaching and variousexaminations. Vocabulary activities design in the textbook largely determines whether the English classesin junior high schools could help students use English knowledge successfully in a limited time. Therefore,when the choosing the words among the textbooks, high quality and reasonable arrangement is a veryimportant criterion.Go for it which is compiled by Institute of Chinese curriculum, English course teaching materialresearch and development center and Centage Learning in the United States in 2006 is widely used injunior high schools of Gansu province. According to its preface, the basic role of Go for it is to organize atext of English direction for both the teacher and students. On one hand, it adopts the multi-syllabus designwhich reflects the full contents and true nature of the language which the learners need to acquire inChinese Junior High Schools. On the other hand, it divides the target language into manageable learningchunks, including vocabulary, grammar, skills (reading, writing, speaking and listening), functions,pronunciation, socio-cultural awareness and learning training. This thesis will mainly focus on the part ofvocabulary activities design and classroom application in textbook and try to analyze the various ways inwhich Go for it conveys the words.
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1.2 The Purpose and Significance of the Research
This paper is mainly based on Dale Brown’s (2010) study of vocabulary knowledge, while he simplyanalyzed the static activities of vocabularies. The author is not only explain the vocabulary activities of “Gofor it”, but also explain the activities of teachers. What’s more, the teachers’ vocabulary activities will beobserved during their teaching. Therefore, it can be inferred that the focus will be on the vocabularyknowledge of textbooks and teaching activities, seeking to find out the features of vocabulary design of Gofor it, especially the layout and presentation of the new words, the underlying thought of its vocabulary design and its vocabulary exercises. The vocabulary design is mainly based on Nation's vocabularyclassification framework tables that teachers should fully grasp vocabulary activities in materials. There arevarieties of vocabulary learning activities and vocabulary exercises, which are helpful to the students’English learning. But teachers cannot fully grasp vocabulary activities in materials. They just teach theliteral meaning of words and do not focus on the form and use. Also teachers cannot fully grasp theintentions of text writers in the design of teaching vocabulary activities. Thus teachers should improve thepersonal qualities and apply them in the vocabulary teaching. Subsequent to the findings, the writer madethe point the strengths and weaknesses of Go for it on vocabulary design.It should be noted that the analysis of the design of vocabulary activities and classroom application intextbooks for junior high schools is still on an initial stage, so the methodology in this thesis remains to beimproved in the future research.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Definition of Vocabulary
It is well known that textbooks provide the fundamental teaching contents of a book, which areregarded as the necessary component of the process of English language vocabulary teaching.Seaton(1982:40) mentioned that they act as a visual record of progress and can be a psychologicalprovision to the students. They are also helpful as a memory aid and for consolidation of classes’ works athome. Meanwhile the textbooks can be a syllabus for the teachers.Once mentioning the textbooks, people would promptly think that they are just the books used by theteachers and the students at school. However, Cheng Xiaotang (2002:1) puts forward that materials can bedefined in two senses: the broad sense and the narrow sense. In the broad sense, it refers to the teachingmaterials used by the teachers and the students in and out of classes to facilitate the learning of a language,such as grammar books, textbooks, workbooks, teacher’s books, dictionaries, readers, cassettes, videos,photocopied materials, CD-ROM and other authentic materials like photographs, newspapers,advertisements, TV programs and radio. In the narrow sense, it just talks about the textbook. Besides, someaccessories like wordbooks, activities books, teacher’s book, cassettes, tapes, after-school reading materials,wall maps are likewise supplied.
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2.2 The Studies of the Textbooks Vocabulary Analysis Abroad
Grant (1989) pointed out that the perfect textbooks do not exist, but the best textbook available for thestudents and teachers certainly does. Such a book should satisfy three factors: Nation (2004) described three ideas that are extremely important for vocabulary activity materialsassessment. First, a planned approach to vocabulary activities development will be much more availablethan dealing with vocabulary activities in opportunistic ways. Second, they have to learn conditions(elaborating, retrieving, noticing) that enhance the learning activities of vocabulary, and a major goal oftextbook’s development should be to design vocabulary activities that are likely to create the conditions.Third, these conditions required to occur in vocabulary activities that go across the four roughly like strandsof fluency development and learning. According to Nation, good vocabulary activity materials designinvolves designing vocabulary activities that the conditions for learning have the best opportunity ofoccurring with the vocabulary activities that are at the appropriate level for the people. Moreover, thetextbooks designed for vocabulary learning require to provide the quantity of input, need to encouragepurposeful attention to vocabulary and need to have low densities of unknown vocabularies.Cunningsworth (1984:18) contended that the introduction of vocabulary in textbooks tends to be alterable.In some cases, vocabulary activity items are seen as isolated units to the slotted into the grammaticalstructure and bearing no connection to other vocabulary items. Other progresses do their best to teachvocabularies as part of the structural system by exploiting relationships and identifying between words.From his point of view, the latter approach would arise to be the better, as empirical evidence and learningtheory suggest that items are recalled and learned more readily if connections can be perceived between theitems forming the systems.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework........8
3.1 Nation’s Framework of Vocabulary Knowledge.........8
3.2 Task-Based Language Teaching Approach......9
3.3 Summary........10
Chapter Four Research Design......12
4.1 Research Questions....12
4.2 Subjects of the Research........12
4.3 Instruments of the Research.........13
4.4 Research Procedures........13
4.5 Data Collection and Analysis.......13
Chapter Five Results and Discussion........ 16
5.1Analysis of the Vocabulary Activities in Go For It.........19
5.2Analysis of the Teachers’Vocabulary Activities and Questionnaire.......29
5.3Analysis the Vocabulary Activities between the Teachers and Textbooks....39
5.4 Summary........40
Chapter Five Results and Discussion
5.1Analysis of the Vocabulary Activities in Go For It
First, the layout and vocabulary presentation of Go for it in the textbook is introduced, because theydirectly influence students’ selective attention, recognition and understanding of the vocabulary, and theylay the foundation of the whole book’s vocabulary design and the arrangement of vocabulary learningactivities, the teaching approaches, as well as the exercises for consolidation.The vocabulary of Go for it can be divided into three parts, namely, Word List, Phrases and Vocabulary.In the part of Word List, new words of every module are listed according to their sequence presented in themodule. For each word, the Chinese equivalent and the part of speech, as well as the pronunciation andpage number are all given. Besides, at the end of the Word List are appended the names of people andplaces respectively. Following the Word List part are the important phrases of each module, which arelisted bilingually in English and Chinese. And, the new words in the Word List are presented in alphabeticorder.There are five junior high school English textbooks, the seventh grade involves two volumes, theeighth grade has two volumes, and the ninth grade includes one volume.
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Conclusion
This paper is mainly based on Brown (2010). However, his study mainly focuses upon textbookanalysis, with no attention given to what and how vocabulary is taught in an English classroom. For thisreason, the present study tries to bridge a gap between textbook design and actual classroom teaching interm of vocabulary teaching. On the one hand, the study analyzed the design of the vocabulary activitiesin Go for it. On the other hand, it examined how teachers make use of the vocabulary activities in theirclassroom teaching. The results showed that the textbooks focused on all the three aspects of vocabularyknowledge (i.e., form, meaning and use) whereas the teachers paid more attention to meaning and form,leaving used other aspect aside. Finally, the author proposed some suggestions according to the results. Form meaning and use have been involved by textbook writers of Junior high school. The arrangementof the teaching materials is reasonable and in a progressive and gradual model. It fits the criteria fortask-based teaching in the new curriculum standards and can contact context, fully exercise all aspects ofstudents’ vocabulary learning from easy to difficulty which cater for requirements of the Nation’svocabulary framework tables.And gradually been deepened and expanded, each unit has a topic, which also developed the relevanceof the classification associated, with vocabulary bold and non-bold words are included and they are practicein the workbook which involves every aspects of the word. Teachers cannot make a clear explanation of allaspects of words, and in area teachers’ pronunciation are not accurate enough. They should improveknowledge level of vocabulary teaching and pay more attention to the English vocabulary not just Chinesemeaning of textbooks. Vocabulary of other aspects of knowledge also should be paid more attention byteachers especially the extended meaning and syntax function of English words in vocabulary teaching.#p#分页标题#e#
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References (omitted)
