English Vocabulary Teaching By Means Of MintEnglish

Vocabulary is one of the three major components that constitute English language knowledge (the other two are phonetics and grammar), it is the foundation of all English language skills and therefore plays a crucial role in foreign language instruction. Just as linguist M. McCarthy (1990) claims that no matter how good one's grammar is and how beautiful one's pronunciation if one does not have adequate vocabulary to express one's own feelings or to understand others'opinions, one still can not communicate with others in this language. Harmer (1990) also points out that"If we compare language structures as the sketch of language, vocabulary is the thing that provides important organs as well as blood and flesh."In recent years computer technological advances have made new ways of teaching and learning language possible. The Internet and the rise of computer-mediated communication in particular have provided an ideal environment for foreign language learning. As the availability of computer hardware and software has grown, more and more English teachers have been engaged in or are trying the practice and research of computer-assisted language learning (CALL).MintEnglish is an expert system of teaching English online, and can help the student achieve an objective of memorizing 3000 English words in 60 hours without difficulty. Aligning with an individual's memory characteristics, MintEnglish can adjust and optimize the process of memory, and form a type of memory traces resembling the mother tongue. It can ensure that the content of the studies will not be forgotten. The product, which is a highly intelligent memory expert system, has played an important role in integration of human brain and computer information, improving teaching results. As many senior high schools of ZiBo have computer labs, MintEnglish is being used in English vocabulary teaching in some of them.In line with the foregoing and based on constructivist learning theory, this thesis aims to seek to establish whether teaching English vocabulary by MintEnglish can motivate learners'interest in vocabulary learning and whether vocabulary teaching by MintEnglish is more effective than traditional instruction. In order to research the impact and feasibility of learning English vocabulary by using MintEnglish, an experiment was carried out in No.17 middle school of ZiBo. Two vocabulary tests were administered to the experimental group and the control group before and after the experiment. The data collected were analyzed qualitatively. The results support the hypothesis that learning English vocabulary by using MintEnglish is more effective than that in traditional instruction and it can motivate learners'interest in vocabulary learning.The positive result of the study shows that teaching English vocabulary by MintEnglish is not only helpful to minimize the existing problems in vocabulary teaching in China's senior middle schools, but may also be significant to the theoretical construction of foreign language teaching in China.