Enhancing Semantic Transparency Of English Vocabulary For Chinese Senior High School Students:A Teaching Experiment

In English learning,vocabulary learning is of great importance.Only by mastering large enough vocabulary can students improve their overall English listening,speaking,reading,and writing abilities.Nevertheless,the effect of vocabulary acquisition is partly determined by the semantic transparency of words or expressions.Semantic transparency refers to the extent to which the meaning of a multi-morphemic word can be determined from its constituents.A number of studies have focused on the effects of semantic transparency on processing of multi-morphemic words,while fewer studies have addressed the application of semantic transparency to senior high school English vocabulary instruction.Therefore,this research conducted an experiment to explore the effect of enhancing English lexical semantic transparency on Chinese senior high school students’ acquisition of English vocabulary.A total number of 89 students from two classes of Wen-shan No.1 High School participated in the study.40 students were selected from each class to form the experimental group and control group respectively.The pre-test result shows that the 2groups differed significantly neither in whole pretest scores,nor in scores for high-transparency and low-transparency words and expressions separately.Besides,10 students of the same grade who would not participate in the experiment took a rating task,based on a 5-point Likert’s scale,on the semantic transparency of 50 words and expressions for the pre-test,and on that of another 50 to be used in the experiment and post-test.15 words and expressions with the highest semantic transparency and 15 with the lowest were determined and selected from the two 50-word groups,to be used in the pre-test,and in the experiment and post-test respectively.Through an interview with 10in-service English teachers,the generally practiced method of vocabulary teaching was obtained and applied in the control class.The approach of contextualized vocabulary teaching was used in the experimental class.The pre-test and post-test data were analyzed with SPSS 26.0.The result of the experiment shows that context is an important factor affecting vocabulary learning as well as the transparency of multi-morphemic words.Context enhancement may enhance the semantic transparency of words and expressions,esp.those opaque ones,or low-transparency ones.The conclusion is that intentional enhancement of semantic transparency of English vocabulary does significantly improve Chinese senior high school students’ acquisition of vocabulary in general,and low-transparency words and expressions as well,but not significantly for high-transparency words.The implication is that for high-transparency words,English teachers should not only train learners with morphemic guessing strategies,but also guide them to guess the meanings of words and expressions based on the context.For low-transparency words,English teachers are expected to teach vocabulary in context.Last but not least,English learners are encouraged to use semantic transparency and context to learn vocabulary.