Research On Problems And Countermeasures Of English Vocabulary Cognitive Strategies’ Teaching In Junior High School

It is known to all that vocabulary is the basic material for language and it is also the most important component in the three basic components—pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.Just as Wilkins(1972) said “without grammar, very little can be conveyed, while without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed.” So, vocabulary plays an important role in the whole process of language learning. According to New English Curriculum Standard(2011), students are required to learn to use 1500-1600 words and 200-300 idioms or collocations when graduating from junior high school. However, the English learning has always been an obstacle for Chinese students especially the English vocabulary learning, a lot of students think the vocabulary learning is so boring that they can’t remember the words though they have tried their best. So it is necessary to remember the English vocabulary by learning the vocabulary cognitive strategy.The related studies done at home and abroad concerning the vocabulary learning strategy and its training indicate that vocabulary learning strategies have a positive impact on students ’English learning and they can improve and facilitate students’ vocabulary learning. Therefore, it’s necessary to conduct strategic training in vocabulary cognitive learning. However, most of the studies done at home take college students, postgraduates or senior high school students as their subjects and among them the descriptive studies are much more than empirical studies, not to mention the empirical studies which take junior high students as its subjects. Based on the current situation, the author claims that it’s necessary to conduct an empirical study on the vocabulary cognitive strategy in vocabulary learning which takes junior high school students as its subjects.The author mainly has three aims concerning the study: Firstly, the author hopes to testify the effectiveness of the vocabulary cognitive strategy pattern in vocabulary learning. Secondly, the author hopes the students can enhance the awareness and concept of vocabulary cognitive strategy in vocabulary learning by the vocabulary cognitive strategy training. Thirdly, the author hopes that the students are able to improve the ability of using the vocabulary cognitive strategy after the training.The present study takes students from Class A(the experimental group)and Class B(the control group)of an ordinary Middle School in Haikou city of Hainan province as its subjects.The author conducted a two-month vocabulary cognitive strategy training in vocabulary learning program in which both quantitative approach and qualitative approach are adopted. In the study,the author tries to answer the following questions: Firstly, how about the students’ vocabulary cognitive strategy of ordinary Middle School in Haikou city? Secondly, after a term vocabulary cognitive strategy training, whether the abilities in using vocabulary cognitive strategy of students in the experimental group are improved? Thirdly, how to build the Strategy-based Instruction to teach English vocabulary and to prove the effectiveness of the Strategy-based Instruction?In the end, the author summarized the whole study and made the relative suggestions, at the same time the author pointed out the disadvantages of the study and put forward the recommendations for the future research. The major conclusion of the research: after a two-month vocabulary cognitive strategy training: on one hand, the awareness and concept of teachers and students have been improved; on the other hand, the students’ ability in using vocabulary cognitive strategy have been improved in daily English vocabulary learning; Finally,the students’ scores in the experimental group in the vocabulary test have been higher than the control group. So it shows that the Strategy-based Instruction is effective.Otherwise, the cultivation of vocabulary cognitive strategy is a long-term and gradual process. In addition, the author has put forward lots of teaching suggestions about the vocabulary cognitive strategy, such as, the schools should make the vocabulary cognitive strategy training for the teachers and the English teachers are hoped to organize the learning activities at regular intervals. Several limitations are pointed out by the author such as the sample size is relatively small, the time is not enough and so on. Meanwhile, the author also provides some recommendations for future research such as involving more subjects from different junior high schools with different English levels and involving more methods in the future study.