| Vocabulary is one of the important parts in language and is an essential component in the second language acquisition. In recent years, more and more English language practitioners have shown interests in vocabulary acquisition. From the previous studies, it can easily be seen that vocabulary acquisition has aroused many researchers’attention, but much of the research is focused on the area of vocabulary learning and teaching strategies. Meanwhile, the subjects chosen were mainly adults and college students, especially on the part of Chinese English learners.The importance of vocabulary acquisition lies in that vocabulary itself is the base of language learning as that in constructing a tall building, the bricks are the essential materials. Based on this, the present study intends to explore the impacts of Top-down Approach, Bottom-up Approach and Mixed Approach on preschool children’s English vocabulary acquisition in a kindergarten. The Schema Theory entails two models of information processing, i.e. bottom-up processing and top-down processing. The different impacts of these two approaches are examined in order to explore their effects on preschool children’s English vocabulary acquisition. This thesis puts forward the following two questions:(1) What impact do Top-down Approach, Bottom-up Approach and the Mixed approach have on preschool children’s English vocabulary acquisition?(2) What impact do top-down approach, bottom-up approach and the mixed approach have on preschool children’s outcome in regard of their English receptive vocabulary acquisition, productive vocabulary acquisition respectively?71kindergarten preschool children from three parallel top classes are chosen as the subjects. All of them share much the same background and English level, participate activities in the pretest, experimental and posttest stages. During these stages, vocabulary tests, questionnaires, interviews as well as case studies are implemented. Both the data collection in the pretest and posttest stages is done by the researcher. The quantitative data is analyzed with the aid of the SPSS18.0. The qualitative data is transcribed, analyzed and finally presented by descriptions.The present study reveals the following findings:(1) The impacts of Top-down approach, Bottom-up approach and Mixed approach on PCEVA are proved to be significantly different.(i) Both Bottom-up approach and Mixed approach have showed significantly facilitative effects on preschool children’s English vocabulary acquisition, but Top-down approach does not show significant effects on the overall outcomes.(ii) The Top-down approach, Bottom-up approach and Mixed approach have significantly different overall impacts on preschool children’s English vocabulary acquisition among each experimental group;(iii) No significant gender differences are found among the three experimental groups.(2) Top-down approach, Bottom-up approach and Mixed approach have significantly improved both the subjects’receptive vocabulary acquisition outcome and their productive vocabulary acquisition outcome. Meanwhile, the facilitative effect is different from each group.(3) Significant differences are found among the three experimental groups in terms of their receptive vocabulary acquisition outcome. However, there are not significantly different facilitative effects among each experimental group on the subjects’ productive vocabulary acquisition outcome.(4)The most facilitative and least helpful approach on preschool children’s receptive vocabulary acquisition are Bottom-up Approach and Mixed Approach respectively, while Bottom-up Approach and Top-down Approach are proved to have the most facilitative and least helpful effects on preschool children’s productive vocabulary acquisition respectively.(5) No gender differences are found between the three experimental groups regarding to neither of preschool children’s receptive nor productive acquisition. In addition, a consistent result is drawn from the case studies. What’s more, parents’ positive attitude and strong awareness of language learning facilitate preschool children’s productive vocabulary acquisition outcome.In order to find out the shortcut or the best way to learn English vocabulary, more attempts are needed in the area of preschool education. Theoretically, the present research provides more tips for further study. More language teaching conception and fundamentals can be integrated based on this finding. Practically speaking, implementing the Top-down Approach, Bottom-up Approach and Mixed Approach in the future experimental instructions of kindergarten English course can become a new start. Meanwhile, the traditional teaching approaches in the kindergarten English teaching still have their advantages. In addition, some new elements can be considered to add into the present English language teaching, Mixed Approach would be a superior choice to facilitate preschool children’s productive vocabulary acquisition. In short, Top-down Approach, Bottom-up Approach and Mixed Approach provide the foreign language practitioners with more choices to improve the preschool children’s English vocabulary acquisition. |
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