| As is known to all that vocabulary is the basic unit of English learning. Severaleducationists and linguists consider that vocabulary learning is one of extremelyimportant elements in language teaching. However, the students have developed akind of bad habit which memorized new words in a repeated mechanic way for a longtime. Although they have spent a mount of time and energy on vocabulary, the resultwas less than satisfactory and they still gained a limited size of vocabulary.Particularly in the real communication, students could not use the English wordswhich they have learnt before effectively and properly. Even for the college studentswho have learned English for more than six years, still being at a loss when face upwith a mount of new words and have no idea how to learn them well. Most of them allcomplain and get annoyed about their limited size of vocabulary and their low abilityto use the language in real communication. Thus, vocabulary learning and teachinghave become a big challenge for both teachers and students in colleges. In recentyears, more and more universities are booming with the advancement anddevelopment of society. But there has been a universal phenomenon that mostnon-English majors are not interested in learning English and their Englishare very poor. Through a few years of English teaching, the author finds that theconventional way of teaching vocabulary has comparative bad effect on students’vocabulary competence and cannot meet their needs fully. So the question of how toimprove this situation and help students learn vocabulary more effectively is a seriousissue, which obviously deserves study. After making a lot of researches on the recentteaching methods, the author also finds that task-based approach has drawn greatattention of both authors and educationists. Many of them have made lots ofinvestigations on English vocabulary teaching, but few has focused on the task-basedapproach to vocabulary teaching in colleges, especially focus on the application ofTBA in independent colleges.The main aim of the thesis is that the author hopes to testify if the application of task-based approach is effective to the English vocabulary teaching in independentcolleges. The author conducted an experiment in two classes, one is the experimentalclass under task-based approach, and the other is the control class with traditionalteaching which lasted for a whole semester. Besides, the author also analyzed the datafrom the tests and a questionnaire in t-test. After the experiment, the author finds thatthere is a distinctive difference comes into being between the two groups from theaspect of not only students’ vocabulary size but also their English proficiency, theexperimental group overpasses the control group in the tests. On the basis of theresults of the questionnaire, we can see that most students have accepted TBA and geta lot of benefits from the approach, such as they all become to keen on taking part inclassroom activities; besides, they also find it is more easier to memorize Englishwords than before. Furthermore, it also shows that TBA could arouse students’interests of learning English greatly and they would like to spare more time inlearning English outside class.Therefore, according to what have been discussed about, we can draw a safeconclusion that the effects of TBA to vocabulary teaching in independent colleges isindisputable. Task-based Approach can definitely enlarge students’ vocabulary sizeeffectively and help students learn English more easily. Meanwhile, their ability inindependent learning is strengthened.Finally, there are some suggestions to researchers and teachers in independentcolleges. |
