Application Of Task-Based Approach In Senior English Vocabulary Teaching

Vocabulary is one of the three elements of language. Learning and mastering vocabulary is the key point of learning and mastering language. Vocabulary teaching is an important task of teaching English and it plays an important part in improving their communicative competence. Up to now, many scholars have studied the teaching and learning of English vocabulary. Nevertheless, these researches focus on university or vocational English vocabulary teaching. And very few people get involved in task-based approach to the application of senior English vocabulary teaching.It is clearly prescribed that English vocabulary teaching is an important part of language teaching by the National English Curriculum of senior school. It has set higher requirements for senior students in learning vocabulary. At present, English vocabulary teaching in senior school is time-consuming but with low efficiency. The traditional vocabulary teaching approaches frustrate the students. They have to endure the tedium of learning vocabulary, which makes students memorize English words in isolation and ignore the cultivation of their linguistic competence. Task-based vocabulary teaching provides the students with context for vocabulary"acquisition''which increases the students'interest of learning English, which facilitates the students'vocabulary intake process.This thesis attempts to make experiment with the application of task-based approach in vocabulary teaching. The subjects of this study are the students of No.2 Senior High school of Feng Nan, Tang Shan. It involved 104 students of Senior One. The 104 subjects are made up of two groups. Fifty-two were in the experimental group and the other 52 were in the control group. This research collects the information by using tests and questionnaires and analyzes the obtained data at the end of the experiment. Through classroom experiment, it's verified that the task-based approach is more effective than the traditional approach and it can enhance the interest of the students and stimulate the students'motivation to learn, thus improve the students'proficiency. It proves a fact that the students are impressed deeply when they first meet the new words, and they would remember the words easily and use them correctly. However, it also has disadvantages in the process in implementing the task-based classroom English vocabulary teaching. There are some weak points in group-work activities, especially in a big class instruction. It seems that English teachers need to think about how to group learners effectively to improve the learning efficiency.Some suggestions of task-based vocabulary teaching are offered and limitations of the study are summarized in the last part of the thesis.