A Study On English Vocabulary Teaching In Vocational Colleges Based On Cultural Schema Theory

In foreign language teaching, vocabulary teaching is indispensible. Since 1970s, with the increasing growth of studies on the roles of Schema Theory in English teaching in China, it has been widely employed in reading, listening, translation and writing, but not a lot in vocabulary teaching. Cultural Schema Theory, as one important part of Schema Theory, includes education background, social experiences, customs, thinking style, and etc. This thesis is based on Cultural Schema Theory and studies vocational students’English vocabulary teaching and learning with a focus on finding out what is the role of Cultural Schema Theory in English vocabulary teaching and how to cultivate students to develop their own effective strategies in vocabulary learning.This thesis selected two vocational classes of Beijing University of Agriculture as the research subject, including one hundred students. The experimental period has covered ten months, and employed SPSS 16.0 as the supportive instrument for data collection and result analyzing. According to the results, in the experimental class, students achieved obvious progresses during the English vocabulary teaching with the basis of Cultural Schema Theory, and meanwhile, their consciousness and interest about vocabulary learning have improved to a higher extent.The detailed research results are as follows:(1) For students, teaching vocabulary based on Cultural Schema Theory cannot only improve students’vocabulary capacity, but also promote the effectiveness of memorizing words and active learning, so that they can develop their own effective learning strategies. (2) For teachers, Cultural Schema Theory can effectively instruct vocabulary teaching, which is proved to be helpful to stimulate students’extant knowledge, increase their understanding and vocabulary, and meanwhile improve learning interest and activate classroom atmosphere. (3) The factors that exert an influence on developing students’learning strategies include:students’learning strategies and extant knowledge, the number of teaching subject and class hour, and how familiar teachers are with vocabulary teaching based on Cultural Schema Theory. However, due to the limitation of objective conditions, this paper has been conducted with insufficiencies and limitations. For example, the experimental time did not cover a very long duration, and the subjects involved only limited to the students in one vocational college. Future researches should be conducted to take all the questions into account. Meanwhile, the author also puts forward some suggestions for the practical significance and value about this subject.