A Study Of The Application Of Schema Theory To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

Vocabulary is one of the tree basic elements of English. No one can deny theimportant role that vocabulary plays in English learning. However, the lack of attentionpaid to English vocabulary teaching results in the bad situation where vocabulary teachingstill uses the traditional approach which mainly depends on mechanical remembering orrote learning. As a consequence, students feel tired of vocabulary learning due to the lackof easy and effective approaches. They find that vocabulary learning is a hard nut to crack.Gradually, they lose confidence and interest in vocabulary learning.As is well known, learning strategy is more significant than knowledge itself. Onlywhen students master an effective strategy can students learn knowledge actively as well aseffectively. Therefore, it is essential to help students to find a relatively easy and effectiveway to learn vocabulary rather than just memorize vocabulary mechanically.This research focuses on the application of schema theory to English vocabularyteaching in senior high school with the intention of seeking for an effective approach tovocabulary learning. According to schema theory, the past experience can not be anaccumulation of successive individual events and experiences. Instead, it must beorganized and made manageable—the past operates as an organized mass rather than as agroup of elements each of which retains its specific character. With the guidance ofschema theory, new vocabulary is taught based on the vocabulary knowledge students haveacquired. Students are required to relate the new words to their acquired vocabularyknowledge actively and seek to construct relevant vocabulary schema.In order to test whether the application of schema theory to vocabulary teaching andlearning is effective, I made an experiment of which the subjects were two classes taughtby myself. After one-term vocabulary teaching based on schema theory in theExperimental Class and traditional vocabulary teaching in the Control Class, through the analysis of statistics of the pre-test scores and post-test scores, it is obvious to see thesignificant improvement in the Experimental Class. In addition, through the talks withsome students in the experimental class, it is found that the application of schema invocabulary teaching and learning is of great help to students as the use of schema enablesstudents to strengthen their interest and confidence in vocabulary learning as well as toform easy and effective vocabulary learning strategies.