An Investigation On The Problems Of English Vocabulary Teaching Transition In Primary And Middle Schools

The transition of English vocabulary teaching in primary and junior middle schools is one of the most important parts in English teaching.It is the problems in the process of English vocabulary teaching transition in primary and junior middle schools that result in the bigger gap between students in junior middle schools.So it is worth a deep investigation on the problems of English vocabulary teaching transition in primary and junior middle schools.Through the literature analysis,interviews,questionnaire survey and SPSS data analysis method of omni-directional study,the research selected three primary schools,two junior middle schools and two schools with a schooling period of nine years in Danyang urban zone to make questionnaires(including 400 junior middle school students and 50 English teachers from the primary schools and the junior middle schools respectively)and to have interviews with teachers(including 3 English teachers from the primary schools and the junior middle schools respectively).The investigation includes three critical points: vocabulary teaching content,vocabulary teaching methods and vocabulary teaching evaluation.The problems of this research can be summarized as follows:About the vocabulary teaching content,the proportion of vocabulary recurrence in 7A English textbook is so large that students can learn English easily in the beginning while they find it more difficult for the increasing and complex vocabularies in the later textbooks.What’s more,some students have difficulty in adapting to the increasing of lexical difficulty in textbooks.Then there are three problems in vocabulary teaching methods: firstly,teachers in junior middle schools neglect the students’ cultivation of communicative competence;secondly,teachers in junior middle schools concentrate on the teaching of the extension of classroom vocabularies but neglect the extracurricular reading instruction;thirdly,drills have taken a large proportion in English vocabulary teaching in junior middle schools.The problems of vocabulary teaching evaluation can be classified into three aspects.Fromthe aspect of the evaluation concepts,the teachers in junior middle schools pay less attention to the students’ autonomy evaluation in vocabulary learning;from that of the evaluation content,the teachers in primary schools focus on vocabulary spelling and pronunciation while the teachers in junior middle schools on vocabulary application;from that of the evaluation methods,the former concentrate on the processes while the later on the results.The reasons can be concluded into three parts that the teachers in primary and junior middle schools not only lack the awareness but also the platform of teaching communication;the students’ basic learning abilities which include their phonetics ability and good learning habits haven’t been paid enough attention in primary schools;some junior middle school teachers still keep conservative vocabulary teaching concepts,such as holding a deviation in the understanding of English vocabulary teaching and overlooking the development of students’ vocabulary learning initiative.In order to realize the goal of smooth transition,it is necessary to encourage English teachers to choose vocabularies content independently instead of adhering to the content in textbooks completely;to organize more teaching communication activities for sparking teachers’ creativity and innovation in vocabulary teaching;to advocate the layered vocabulary teaching methods,to strengthen the pronunciation teaching in primary schools and to foster students’ independent learning habit so as to strengthen the cohesion in teaching methods;and to encourage the diversification of evaluation subjects and methods.