The Application And Inspiration Of Constructivist Theory In English Vocabulary Teaching And Learning In Senior High School

The Standard of English Curriculum formulated by the Ministry of Education set a higher requirement for senior high school students. They are required to learn and grasp 3,500 words or so upon graduation. The increase of vocabulary has imposed a new challenge on Chinese high school students and the biggest problem that students have is how to understand, store and master vocabulary effectively. Therefore, it is quite necessary to explore what learning strategies can help students learn English vocabulary effectively. Constructivism has become ubiquitous in America and Europe since the late 1980s and is spread to the forefront of various academic domains, especially the educational field.Constructivism is a sort of new learning theory which has gained great concern and is highly thought of by the academe at present, it ingeniously reveals the cognitive rule during the process of learning. On the constructivist view of learning, knowledge is not gained by the pedagogical activities of teachers but by the construction of meaning under a certain circumstance, that is, social cultural background, including the avail of essential learning material and the help from teachers as well as partners. Learning is such a process that learners actively construct their own knowledge and experience. In order to better study the application of constructivism in the teaching practice, this paper discusses the compatibility of constructivist theory with the standard of English curriculum in English vocabulary teaching practice in senior high school.The paper consists of seven chapters.In the first chapter, introduction, I give a brief review of the research background, the research framework and the aim as well as significance of the present study.In the second chapter, I make an analysis of constructivist theory. Firstly, I reviewed the development of constructivist theory in the history. Constructivist theory is nothing new to pedagogy in general, and it has a psychological foundation. Constructivism advocates learning under the guidance of teachers and student-centered learning. Students are the subjects of information process and active constructors of knowledge rather than passive recipients of external stimulation, teachers have the role of helpers and promoters to facilitate the students to construct the significance rather than impart knowledge to students. Constructivism holds that learning is a process of realizing the meaning construction through interpersonal collaboration with the help of others under certain circumstance. Then, the thesis deals with the constructivist strategies for English vocabulary teaching and learning and there is compatibility between constructivism and the standard of English curriculum.In the third chapter, I put forward the importance of vocabulary learning, the necessity of research into vocabulary learning strategies and review the researches on the vocabulary learning strategies in China. Vocabulary is the foundation of language, and language consists of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. Vocabulary is the building material of language and there would be no language without words. Vocabulary teaching plays an important role in language teaching. D. A. Wilkins (1978:111), a famous British linguist once put forward that people may not convey themselves completely, whereas, one can not express anything without words. In English vocabulary teaching, we may find that students'English will remain at a level and it is rather difficult for them to make a new breakthrough in their English after reaching a certain degree. There is a reason that we can trace back to vocabulary which composes an important factor, and students'limited vocabulary will directly affect the sum of words as well as the development and improvement of their listening, speaking, reading and translating skills. Research shows that the bigger the vocabulary is, the more smooth the listening comprehension, the higher the reading efficiency, the stronger the translation ability and the richer the writing contents would be. However, as far as the majority of the students are concerned, vocabulary is a fortress for them to capture. Thus, there is a problem demanding prompt solution which is how to help students to break through the bottleneck quickly and to enlarge their vocabulary in English effectively. Vocabulary teaching is of vital importance and constructivist theory as a guide to instruct the English vocabulary teaching is one of the most effective ways of learning vocabulary.In the fourth chapter, according to notions of knowledge, teaching and study put forward by constructivist perspective, combined with my teaching experience gained as a graduation intern in a Senior High School in Beijing, I give a detailed account of some vocabulary learning strategies that are suitable for senior high school students, including method of regularly review, recollection by cataloguing, learn with a dictionary, imaginary predictive strategies, semantic processing strategy, root analytical strategy, association memorizing strategy, method of guessing from context and communicative strategy, etc. Finally, I bring up some proposals in vocabulary teaching; I suppose that teachers should try to do their utmost to focus on students-oriented learning for the benefit of their studies. In order to help students to form strong motivation to learn vocabulary and construct the current words'meaning, it is also necessary for teachers to change their own teaching concepts and discard the teacher-centered traditional vocabulary teaching mode. There is one point to be noted that in order to give students much more effective guidance, teachers should understand learning strategies thoroughly in advance. Only when teachers master those learning strategies, could they impart to students well.In the fifth chapter, I introduce a survey of vocabulary learning and teaching strategies in detail and present the results and discussions of the collected data. The instruments of the research include two questionnaires which have been done by students in a Senior High School in Beijing and an interview with 15 English teachers. The first questionnaire consists of 10 items aimed at getting the idea of general information about students'vocabulary learning beliefs. The second questionnaire consists of 13 items regarding to vocabulary learning strategies used by students. The findings suggest that learners usually employ the method of repeated recitation and rote learning to remember new English words, whereas they have made a little headway. And there is a reason which can be traced back to inanimate memorial method, since negative emotions may emerge and students are bound to feel tired. In other words, students'lack of effective vocabulary learning strategies should be responsible for their insufficient vocabulary. Through the survey, we may find that a majority of teachers failed to give adequate and effective guidance on students'vocabulary learning, and they are apt to pay much more attention to the meaning of teaching, and place emphasis on explaining single words on its Chinese definitions as well as usage, thus many a students form a bad habit of rote learning.In the sixth chapter, an experiment was conducted on the effectiveness of vocabulary learning strategies. In order to test how strategies affect vocabulary learning and the retention rate, I did an experiment in two classes with the same level, in Grade Two, in a Senior High School in Beijing during my graduation internship. In the experimental class, I applied the constructivist theory to vocabulary teaching, and in addition, I adopted new vocabulary teaching strategies. However, in the controlling class, the traditional teaching method was still adopted. I also used a pre-test and post-test, namely, Test A and Test B to find the difference of vocabulary ability and reading level between the control group and the experimental group. Through the data analysis of the pre-test and post-test, we may find that there's a remarkable difference between those two groups. The result of the post-test shows that students in the experimental group have made an obvious achievement, the improvement of their vocabulary ability and reading level which, I suppose, has something to do with the vocabulary learning strategy. Meanwhile, I find that students can use reading skills effectively along with the increase of vocabulary.Chapter 7 is conclusion of this paper. I summarize the key point, and indicate the limitations of the study as well as suggestions for further study. In addition, I suppose that psychological motivation is also an important factor which may affect the foreign language vocabulary learning. In order to get an in-depth understanding of the problem, it is necessary for us to conduct more empirical research related to psychology and linguistic.