A Survey Of English Vocabulary Instruction To Non-English Majors In Chinese Common Colleges And Universities

Within the fields of language teaching and applied linguistics, the relative neglect of studies of vocabulary acquisition and related areas of lexical research in second language (L2) acquisition has often been commented on. However, since the late 1970s, there has been a revival of interest in the role of vocabulary in L2 learning, and a growing body of empirical studies has been presented concerning the issues such as the nature of the bilingual lexicon, vocabulary acquisition, lexical storage, lexical retrieval, and use of vocabulary by L2 learners. Basing on the findings of these researches, this thesis is intended to make a survey of English vocabulary instruction to non-English majors in China's common colleges and universities through a self-designed questionnaire.The author sent a 50-item questionnaire respectively to 30 college English teachers from one Chinese common university. Those teachers were required to fill in the questionnaire according to their perceptions of college English vocabulary teaching and their practice of vocabulary teaching in the classroom. Perceptions are considered important to this investigation because teachers' beliefs about vocabulary teaching are likely to influence their decisions about how to guide students in their vocabulary learning appropriately. To testify whether some of the teachers' choices were in accordance with the real situation, 78 college students coming from the same university were also involved in answering 5 of the questions that were corresponding to the questions to the teachers. Through the survey, some valuable data that account for the reasons of some problems existing in vocabulary instruction are collected. Meanwhile, they give helpful enlightenment to the solution of those problems.This paper begins with the brief introduction to the research of L2 vocabulary acquisition in western countries and in China. After a general review of vocabularypedagogical situation in Chinese universities, an investigation on the basic concept that Chinese common college English teachers hold towards vocabulary instruction and their corresponding classroom performance is conducted. The results of the investigation are the following:Firstly, teachers have consensus on two issues:1. Vocabulary instruction is quite important in English Teaching.2. Vocabulary acquisition is one of the major difficulties that the majority of college non-English majors encounter in English learning.Secondly, teachers hold great divergence on two points:1. Is direct vocabulary instruction necessary for college students?2. How to arrange the vocabulary instruction in class?Thirdly, the survey reveals that there are three pairs of contradictions in vocabulary teaching in Chinese common colleges and universities as well.1. Teachers and students hold opposite attitude to vocabulary exercises.2. Students' adoption of dictionaries is not in accordance with teachers' requirement.3. The majority of the teachers realize the necessity of making further study of lexical teaching theories, while in reality their theories learning is not adequate.Furthermore, teachers tend to agree that there are mainly four problems existing in their vocabulary teaching:1. The reading materials of the textbooks are so literary that students have little chance to put the vocabulary that they have learned from the texts into use in their daily lives.2. In class, excessive new words to learn leave little time for students to improve their oral communicative competence.3. Many students make great effort to learn and memorize new vocabulary, only finding the effect is extremely disappointing. Facing this phenomenon, teachers admit that they can hardly figure out some feasible solutions to fantheir diminished interest to vocabulary learning. 4. Students over-rely on their teachers in vocabulary learning. Lastly, two aspects of college English vocabulary teaching need to be improved:1. Most teachers' vocabulary teaching techniques a...