An Experimental Study On Schema Theory To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

Vocabulary is one of the important components of language.D.A.Wilkins(1972),the famous British linguist holds that without grammar,one cannot express a lot of things;without vocabulary,one cannot express anything.According to English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(2003),senior high school students are asked to broaden vocabulary to express things.However,English vocabulary teaching in Senior high school has not been paid much attention to.The teachers mainly use the traditional vocabulary teaching method,and the students are mainly remembering the words mechanically.Due to the lack of effective methods of vocabulary learning,students feel it boring and not very effective to learn vocabulary,so the students gradually lose their interest and confidence in English vocabulary learning.This thesis aims to provide students with an effective vocabulary learning method based on Schema Theory.Schema Theory emphasizes the importance of connecting the new knowledge with the old knowledge.The writer applies Schema Theory to vocabulary teaching,in order to activate students' previous knowledge to from various schemata while learning the new words,which can help students to le arn and remember vocabulary effectively.And there are mainly two research questions: 1)Can Schema Theory-based teaching help to enhance students' interest in English vocabulary learning? 2)Can Schema Theory-based teaching help to improve students' English vocabulary learning ability?In order to verify the validity of English vocabulary teaching based on Schema Theory,the writer did the experiment by choosing two parallel classes randomly in Grade Eleven at Huanghua New Century High School,one class as the experimental class,the other as the control class.And the teacher applied Schema Theory into English vocabulary teaching in the experimental class and used the traditional vocabulary teaching in the control class.Besides,the questionnaire and the interview were used to investigate whether the students' English vocabulary learning interest was enhanced.In addition,a pre-test and a post-test were used to testify whether there were significant differences between the experimental class and the control class;whether students' vocabulary learning ability was improved.The experimental data was analyzed by Statistical Package for Social Science(SPSS)13.0.In conclusion,the data shows that there are significant differences between the traditional vocabulary teaching and the vocabulary teaching based on Schema Theory.1)Students' interest in learning English vocabulary was enhanced by Schema Theory-based teaching.2)Students' ability of learning English vocabulary was improved with Schema Theory-based teaching.Therefore,there are suggestions for further English vocabulary teaching and learning: teachers should try to create different vocabulary activities and guide students to establish,activate and apply vocabulary schemata,in order to stimulate students' interest in English vocabulary learning;students should play the main role of learning,participate in the classroom actively,and explore their own suitable learning methods through applying Schema Theory,in order to improve the ability of learning English vocabulary.