Shanghai International Studies University
ON APPLICATION OF EXPLICIT VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION
IN COLLEGE ENGLISH TEACHING
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate School and College of English
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of Master of Arts
By
He Ning
Under Supervision of Dr
Dr.. Zhang Xuemei
November 2008
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abstract (Chinese)
ⅱ
Abstract (English)
ⅲ
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 The Importance of Vocabulary Instruction
1
1
1.2 The Current Situation of Vocabula ry Instruc tion and Learning in Chinese
Universities
3
1.3 The Inefficiency of College Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition and its Reasons
4
1.4 Overall Structure of the Thesis
6
Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Elements Involved in Learning a Word
7
7
2.1.1 Word Form
7
2.1.2 Word Structure
8
2.1.3 Syntactic Pattern of the Word in a Phrase and Sentence
9
2.1.4 Word Meaning
10
2.1.5 Sense Relations of the Word
10
2.1.6 Common Collocations
11
2.2 Implicit Instruction VS. Explicit Instruction
11
2.2.1 Explicit Instruction
11
2.2.2 Implicit Instruction
12
2.2.3 The Comparison between the Different Methods of Explicit Instruction and
Implicit Instruction
12
2.2.4 The Interrelations between Implicit and Explicit Vocabulary Instruction
13
2.2.5 The Limitation of Implicit Vocabulary Learning and Instruction
13
2.3 The Necessity to Combine the Implicit and Explicit Instruction
14
2.4 Implications of Explicit Vocabulary Instruction in the Classroom
15
2.4.1 Building a Large Sight Vocabulary
15
2.4.2 Integrating New Words with the Old
16
2.4.3 Providing a Number of Encounters with a Word
16
2.4.4 Promoting a Deep Level of Processing
17
2.4.5 Facilitating Imaging and Concreteness
17
2.4.6 Using a Variety of Techniques
18
2.5 Cautions in Explicit Vocabulary Instruction
Chapter Three A Study
25
26
3.1 Design of the Study
26
3.1.1 Purposes
26
3.1.2 Research questions
26
3.1.3 Participants
27
3.1.4 Instruments
27
3.1.5 Procedures
28
3.2 Teaching Practice
3.2.1 Using Word List to Build a Large Sight Vocabulary
29
29
3.2.2 Using a Variety of Techniques to Teach Word Meaning
30
3.2.3 Encouraging Wide Reading
32
3.2.4 Arranging Time in Class
32
3.3 Data analysis
33
3.3.1 Analysis of the Pre-test
33
3.3.2 Analysis of the Vocabulary Post-test
35
3.3.3 Analysis of the Integrated Post-test
37
3.3.4 Analysis of the Questionnaire
38
3.4 Results and Discussion
39
3.4.1 Summary of the Findings
39
3.4.2 Conclusion
40
Chapter Four Conclusion
41
4.1 Findings of the Study
41
4.2 Implications of the Study for College English Teaching
41
4.3 Limitation of the Research and Suggestion for Further Study
42
References
44
Appendix Ⅰ
48
Appendix Ⅱ
55
Appendix Ⅲ
63
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my heart-felt gratitude to my respected adviser, Dr. Zhang
Xuemei, for her enlightening guidance, detailed explanation and invaluable advice on
my thesis, which has helped me to make this research and makes my work possible.
I also owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Professor Mei Deming, Professor
Zou Shen, Professor Zhang Jian, and all the other teachers who have taught me during
my study in Shanghai International Studies University.
I am obliged to my colleague Xu Hongyan, who helped me to monitor the
examination experiment. My thanks also go to all my students who supported me
during the research. Without their warm-hearted participation, I could not have
attained data that approximate reality in such a high degree.
Finally, I will express my sincere thanks to my husband as well as my parents for
their encouragement, patience and support to my study.
显性词汇教学法在大学英语教学中的应用
随着英语的广泛使用，英语学习者和研究者都视英语词汇为英语学习的关键因
素。然而，由于种种原因，包括教学方法在内，目前大学英语教学现状不尽人意。学
生在掌握大量词汇及合理运用所学词汇方面都显得困难重重。因此，引入更为有效的
词汇教学模式势在必行。本文主要研究了在大学英语教学中运用显性词汇教学法的 有
效性和可行性。
显性词汇教学法以认知理论为依据，强调了学习是人使用脑力有意识进行洞察和
分析的过程。因此，显性教学法有利于提高学生学习词汇的兴趣和动机。在大学英语
教学中引入显性教学法是必要的也是必需的。
本文试用长达 3 个月的试验测试来验证显性词汇教学法的有效性和可行性。试验
参与对象是来自上海电机学院的大一新生，30 人一组。对实验组采用显性词汇教学
法，而对控制组采取常规教学法。在试验工具方面，采用了实验前测试、试验后测试
及问卷调查等方式。通过收集、分析数据，最后发现，实验组取得了显著的进步；此
外，实验组在阅读、翻译、写作等方面的技能也显著提高，从而证明显性词汇教学法
优于传统教学法。
关键词：显性教学法
大学英语教学
i
词汇教学
ON APPLICATION OF EXPLICIT VOCABULARY
INSTRUCTION IN COLLEGE ENGLISH TEACHING
With more and more widely use of English, both learners and researchers consider
English vocabulary as a crucial element in learning English. Nevertheless, the current
situation in college English teaching is not very much satisfactory due to various reasons
including some teaching methods. Students have difficulty in acquiring a large number of
words and using them appropriately. Therefore, a much more scientific model of
vocabulary teaching is duly demanded. The thesis mainly probes the effectiveness and
feasibility of the explicit vocabulary instruction in College English Teaching.
Based on some cognitive theories, explicit vocabulary teaching emphasizes that
learning is a kind of mental perception and a conscious process, which may arise students’
interests and motivation in vocabulary learning. Applying the explicit vocabulary
instruction in the college English teaching is worthwhile and necessary.
A three-month period of experiment is carried out in this research so as to testify the
efficiency and feasibility of the new teaching approach. Participants (freshmen from
Shanghai Dian Ji University) are divided into two groups, 30 students in each group. The
experiment group is instructed with the new approach. Pre-tests, post-tests and
questionnaires are applied in the study. The data and analysis shows that the experiment
group does make significant progress in vocabulary learning whereas the control group not.
In addition to this, the explicit teaching method also has assisted students in developing
their English ability in other aspects such as reading, translation and writing, which proves
that the new approach is superior to the traditional one adopted in the control group.
Key Word: explicit instruction; college English teaching; vocabulary teaching
ii
Chapter 1 Introduction
As a kind of international language, English is widely used throughout the world both
on significant occasions and in people’s daily life. According to some surveys, more than
half of the newspapers and scientific editorials are published in English, eighty percent of
information stored in computers and seventy-five percent of mail is written in English, and
three fifths broadcasting stations are using English around the globe. The massive use of
English language accordingly arouses people’s strong interest in the learning of English
vocabulary. On the other hand, what deserves our attention is that as we enter the 21st
century, English vocabulary expands quickly with the development of human society.
“From the sociolingustic point of view, we know that changes in pronunciation and
grammar are much slower, but changes in vocabulary are much faster.”(Lin, 2001:116). As
a result, great importance should be attached to the learning and instruction of English
vocabulary.
Nowadays, English is considered as one of the most important and fundamental
subjects in most universities in China. Some key universities even have higher standard for
students’ English competence. The proportion of passers to failures in BAND-4 is still
considered as a crucial element to evaluate college English teaching to some extent. In
most universities, to get a BAND-4 certificate is a prerequisite for the Bachelor’s degree. In
the fierce competition of employment, those who have attained a BAND-6 certification are
much easier to get a job. Although people have realized the importance of English and
made great efforts to teach and learn English ，there are still some problems that block the
efficiency of English instruction. In this chapter, more discussion will be focused on the
weakness and existing problems of traditional English vocabulary teaching pedagogy,
emphasizing the necessity to renovate English vocabulary instruction so as to help students
promote their English competence.
1.1
The importance of vocabulary instruction
During the past decades, vocabulary studies and instruction were somehow neglected
in comparison with grammar or phonology learning and teaching for the reason that they
are more amenable to generalization than vocabulary. In the early 1970s, “Linguistics have
had remarkably little to say about vocabulary and one can find very few studies which
could be of any practical interest for language teachers”(Wilkins, 1972:109). Almost a
decade later Meara (1980:221) criticized that vocabulary acquisition had “received short
1
shrift” from applied linguistics. Ellis (1995) stated that the situation had not changed
significantly.
The neglect of vocabulary not only leads to learners’ inefficient use of words, but also
causes misunderstanding even embarrassment in people’s communication. In certain
circumstance, the errors of vocabulary are more misleading than that of grammar.
“Despite the traditional neglect, recent years have seen a greater awareness of the
questions which need to be addressed with regard to vocabulary learning by researchers,
materials designers, and teachers.”(Tricia, 2000:111) What many language teachers might
have intuitively known for a long time, that a solid vocabulary is necessary in every stage
of language learning, is now being openly stated by some second language acquisition
researchers. As we enter the 21st century, acquisition of vocabulary has assumed a more
important role, or even the central role in learning a second language (Lewis, 1993). And
more quotations illustrate this:
No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are
mastered, without words to express a wider range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot
happen in any meaningful way. (McCarthy, 1990：ⅷ)
Knowing words is the key to understanding and being understood. The bulk of learning a new
language consists of learning new words. Grammatical knowledge does not make for great
proficiency in a language. (Vermeer, 1992：147)
The lexicon may be the most important component for learners. (Gass and Selinker, 1994:270)
What is interesting is that foreign language learners themselves have never questioned
the importance of vocabulary. They perceive that learning language involves learning a
large number of words. Those who live and work in a foreign language country find that
they can get by more readily by learning vocabulary than learning grammatical structures,
especially in the early stages of the learning process. And this can be proved in a survey of
students’ attitudes towards vocabulary made by Morgan and Rinvolucri (1986:4-5)
Two thirds of [those surveyed] said they were not taught enough words in class, word they needed
when talking to people, watching TV, and reading. They felt their teachers were keen on teaching
them grammar and on improving their pronunciation, but that learning vocabulary came a poor
third.
What’s more, unlike the acquisition of other aspects of language, particularly
pronunciation, the learning of vocabulary is an ever-lasting process that does not seem to be
impeded by age. As Rivers (1983) argues that, in contrast with other aspects of language,
the ability to learn new vocabulary appears to get easier as one gets older.
At present, in the context of college English teaching in China, college English
teaching aims at improving students’ English level in the aspect of listening, speaking,
2
reading, writing and translating, and all these skills cannot stand without vocabulary. The
New College English Syllabus has set a definite goal and concrete task for vocabulary
instruction: at elementary level, 4200 words, including 3000 words for flexible application;
at intermediate level, 5500 words, including 3000 words for flexible application.
Consequently, the college English teacher is now faced with the big challenge of how to
teach vocabulary and how best to help students store and retrieve words.
1.2
The current situation of vocabulary instruction and learning in
Chinese universities
For a long period of time, information processing theories and behaviorism have
formed the bedrock of popular education theory. Behaviorists and information processing
theorists hold the view that learning is essentially a matter of storing information for later
recall. Based on these, the predominant and typical teaching model is direct teaching model,
which emphasizes the teacher’s central position but neglects the students’ active attendance
in the classroom. Consequently, word-random and pre-teaching approaches dominate the
English vocabulary instruction in Chinese universities classroom. Most teachers get used to
taking the following procedures in teaching vocabulary.
First, ask students to turn to the vocabulary list;
Second, require students to read new words and phrases according to the given
phonetic symbols;
Third, give the English definition and sometimes only the Chinese equivalent if some
words are too abstract to explain;
Fourth, illustrate the use of words by giving some phrase or sentence examples;
Finally, require students to memorize these new words by reading and writing them
repetitively.
Some teachers invariably take aforementioned procedures in their teaching practice,
without applying any coined approach. However, students’ creativity and activeness are
neglected to a large extent, and this will decidedly results in unsatisfactory outcomes.
Namely, students may get tired of such routines, lose their interest in vocabulary learning
and become passive listeners and note-takers. Most of them take notes on vocabulary, or
write notes in the margins of their books. More mechanical learning strategy, like repetition,
is favored and commonly used. They learn word in isolation and seldom associating
vocabulary learning with their linguistic competence and practical use. Therefore, students’
productive use of vocabulary is quite limited even though they could obtain a wide range of
receptive vocabulary.
3
1.3
The inefficiency of college students
tudents’’ vocabulary acquisition and
its reasons
Due to the unsuccessful vocabulary instruction approaches, the current situation of
students’ English vocabulary acquisition in Chinese universities is not so satisfactory as
well. The following phenomena rightly illustrate this.
A. Limited vocabulary and inappropriate use of words
The number of words which students need to learn is extremely large. However, in the
traditional vocabulary teaching practice, new words are mostly instructed in isolation,
students may think by mistake that every word in English has a one-to-one Chinese
equivalent and easily get into the habit of using their mother tongue as a frame work on
which to attach English lexical items. Thus, they will not establish a necessary frame work
to take account of sense relations, such as synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy between
items in English, which inevitably hinders them from expanding their word knowledge. As
Cohen and Aphek (1981) find, most students simply try to memorize the words which they
did not know. Nowadays, many students are keen to memorize lots of difficult, low
frequency words, such as GRE words and take it for granted that this helps to enlarge their
vocabulary. Nevertheless, they cannot use them appropriately but only spell them or give
their Chinese definition. Other students even fail to pronounce or spell out the correct
words.
B. Ignorance of denotative and connotative meaning
“If a word has reference to an object, action, or even in the physical world, this can be
described as its referential or denotative meaning” (Tricia, 2000:112). College students
sometimes wrongly believe that vocabulary learning means simply learning new words for
sets of objects, or states, or concepts, neglecting the fact that English reflects the world in
different ways and uses different categories to describe it. For example, every human being
has two grandmothers, but there is only one word in English for both your mother’s mother
and your father’s mother. However, Chinese has two different words, “ 奶 奶 ” for the
father’s mother and “ 外婆 ” for the mother’s mother respectively. For another example,
English has three different words, breakfast, lunch and supper, to express a meal, but this
slight difference is usually neglected in Chinese. College students are prone to make
mistakes in their choice of words if they cannot understand the lexical system of English.
As well as denotative meaning, connotative meaning of English words also produces
difficulties in vocabulary learning. Connotative meaning is the intentional meaning which a
word suggests or implies. It derives from a mix of cultural, political, social and historical
4
sources. Sometimes it takes students great efforts to deal with its complexities. For example,
among the following adjectives used to describe people, students need to make careful
choices, considering that which have positive associations and which negative.
obstinate
energetic
ambitious
stubborn
arrogant
confident
reliable
wise
ambitious
rebellious
Some of these will invariably be positive, take “energetic”， “confident”，“reliable”，
“wise” for instance. Some will always be negative, for example “obstinate”, “rebellious”,
“stubborn”, but others will depend on the context of use and the impression the writer is
trying to create, “ambitious” is such a case.
Therefore, it’s difficult for college students to achieve a good command of vocabulary
learning if they cannot grasp the denotative and connotative meaning of a target word.
C. The use of vocabulary at wrong level of formality
Some students use very formal words in their daily conversations with native speakers
and make them confused. Others, on the other hand, use informal words, the colloquial
even slang in their academic reports. These result from their inappropriate dealing with
word formality. According to the formality of the language, there are five degrees, that is,
frozen, formal consultative, casual, and intimate. The chosen words should be appropriate
to the situation in which we are speaking, and the relationship between us. In face-to-face
conversation,
informal words should be chosen, while in writing, especially in literature
or academic reports, formal words should be employed. Use of words in wrong style may
lead to embarrassment, or more seriously, unfavorable effects.
D. Forgetting and decaying
The mental lexicon is similar to a storehouse, a library, an encyclopedia, and a
compute. Native speakers are certainly able to cross-refer to synonyms, antonyms, and
hyponyms and are able to retrieve words with similar spelling or similar prefixes and
suffixes (Tricia, 2000). Researches on memory suggest that words are stored in a network of
associations, with personal investment (Stevich, 1976). However, in the current “teachercentered” classroom, students are crammed with vocabulary passively without associating
the new words with the old ones. Due to the limited exposure to English in China, their
memory of the old words diminishes gradually with time passing before the new words are
attained. And this is why students always grumble that words are difficult to memorize and
retrieve when needed.
From above mentioned, the current situation of vocabulary instruction in Chinese
universities is very far from satisfaction and in great need of improving. The vocabulary
instruction is an essential topic which demands our attention and deep research.
5
1.4
Overall structure of the thesis
Chapter One introduces the background of the research and the importance of
vocabulary instruction.
Chapter Two describes the elements involved in learning a word and further probes
into the theoretical basis and focus of the research by introducing the implications of
explicit vocabulary instruction.
Chapter Three presents the design of the study, including its purpose, participants,
hypothesis, instruments and procedure. Teaching techniques are also presented in this
chapter. By analyzing and discussing the collected data, results are got to certify the
efficiency and feasibility of the explicit vocabulary instruction in college English class.
In the last chapter, it comes to a conclusion that the application of the explicit
vocabulary instruction in college English education is of great importance. The implications
of the research, its limitations as well as its further work are presented in this chapter.
6
Chapter 2 Literature Review
Learning a word is more than just getting its meaning. Various approaches to the definition
of a word in literature demonstrate that a word has a set of properties. The importance of
English vocabulary and the complexity of words learning demand meticulous study of the word
learning and instruction. A scientific, efficient and practical vocabulary teaching model is
needed so as to achieve ideal teaching results.
In this chapter, more discussion will be focused on the elements involved in learning a
word, emphasizing that teachers should employ efficient approaches to teach different features
of a word. Moreover, by contrasting and analyzing, this chapter further probes into the
theoretical basis of explicit vocabulary instruction and the implications of this new approach in
the literature.
2.1
Elements involved in learning a word
In looking at vocabulary, it is natural to focus on the word as the primary unit. The ancient
Greek philosopher Aristotle
“defined words as the smallest significant units of
speech”(Ullmann, 1997:26) ， and this definition was widely accepted by most linguists for
centuries. Using modern methods of analysis, some linguists view that the smallest significant
unit of speech is not the word, but the morpheme. According to the contemporary linguistic
theory, represented by Leonard Bloomfield’s point of view, a word is a minimum free
form(Ullmann, 1997)，the smallest form that may appear in isolation. No matter how a word is
defined, it has a fixed sound form and a certain meaning. In other words, a word is a unity of
sound and meaning. Summarizing various approaches to the definition of a word, it is generally
agreed that knowledge of the following is indispensable to learning a word.
2.1.1 Word form
Each word has its spoken and written form, and that is pronunciation and spelling.
A. Pronunciation
Careful attention to pronunciation is important part of vocabulary instruction if new word
is to be used effectively, or understood without difficulty in spoken English. Gibson and Levin
(1975) reported that the pronounceable words were perceived more accurately than the
unpronounceable ones. However, it is not easy for learners to achieve native-like levels of
7
fluency and pronunciation after the onset of puberty even if they can approach native-like
levels of mastery of other aspects of the language, such as grammar, listening and writing. The
learning of pronunciation is very much determined by the learner’s mother language. The L1
language system may be responsible for the learner’s inability to discriminate between some
problematic phonemes. For example, Chinese students are difficult to distinguish [n] from [η]
for the reason that there is no pronunciation similar to [ η ] in Chinese Pinyin. Therefore, to
instruct pronunciation, the teacher usually requires students to pay more attention to such
aspects as phonetic symbols, pitch, stress and some pronunciation rules.
B. Spelling
Word spelling is especially important in the process of vocabulary acquisition. If learners
misspell a word, they will fail to convey their meaning accurately to others and even cause
misunderstanding and embarrassment.
Orthography is one reason accounting for misspelling. An English written word, however,
may provide no clues to its pronunciation (e.g. different pronunciation of the letter “o” in love,
chose, woman, and women, odd). As Laufer (1997) viewed, words characterized by soundscript incongruence were good candidates for pronunciation and spelling errors and a different
L1 writing system was another reason for learning problems.
Additionally, length is another element affecting learners’ achieving in correct spelling.
Many linguists, including Rodgers (1969), Coles (1982) and Phillips (1981), have investigated
the connection with word length and word learning. Rodgers (1969) held the view that item
length was not a significant variable. In his experiment, the total syllables-per-item ratios for
the most-learned and least-learned Russian-English word pairs were show to be almost the
same. Coles (1982), however, found that word length had a strong effect on word recognition, at
least in its written form. Long words produced more errors in recognition tasks than shorter ones.
Phillips (1981) found that length had a significant influence on learning, but it decreased with
the increase in the learner’s proficiency. Therefore, if the length factor can be properly isolated,
we may find longer words more difficult to learn than the shorter ones. However, it is hard to
attribute the difficulty of learning a particular word to its length rather than to a variety of
factors. (Laufer, 1997)
2.1.2 Word structure
As Ullmann (1997) views, a word is a minimum free form. Therefore, it is necessary to
study the basic free morpheme (or bound root morpheme) and the common derivations of the
8
word and its inflections. On this research, it is consequently necessary to introduce the terms of
affixation and compounding.
A. Affixation
Affixation is the morphological process whereby a prefix or a suffix is attached to a root
or stem. In this way, items can be modified or changed from one part of speech to another. For
example, we can change the base form “comfort” by adding prefix and suffix to it in the
following ways:
comfort + able =comfortable
comfort + able + y =comfortably (“e” is omitted here)
un + comfort + able = uncomfortable
dis + comfort = discomfort
dis + comfort + able = discomfortable
dis + comfort + ing = discomforting
The above variations of the base form “comfort” suggest that the structure of English
word can be ruled and traced, which is of great help in the learning and instruction of
vocabulary.
B. Compounding
Compounding is a word formation that creates compound word derived from two or more
separated words to express a single idea. There are mainly three forms of compound words:
The closed form ， the words are melded together. The words secondhand, football,
childlike, handbook, keyboard, makeup, notebook are of this terms.
The hyphenated form, such as mother-in-law, master-at-arms, over-the-counter, five-pack,
seven-meter-high, mass-produced;
The open form, such as box office, real estate, middle class, full moon, half brother,
general manager etc.
2.1.3 Syntactic pattern of the word in a phrase and sentence
In the vocabulary instruction, a word may be learned in isolation. However, it is
impossible to use a word with no consideration of its syntactic pattern in a phrase and sentence.
According to the Syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis (Landau and Gleitman, 1985), the
syntactic behavior of a word provides crucial information about its meaning. Thus, it is
necessary for learners to grasp the word’s syntactic pattern in different situations.
For instance, “make” is a very active word which can be added with different prepositions
9
and adverbials to present various meanings. “make out” is an informal way to express the idea
of “manage”, “survive’; “make for sb.” means moving in the direction of sb., and “make sth.
up” refers to composing or constituting something.
The syntactic pattern of the word is only to be acquired in the long term of vocabulary
learning with students’ exposure to English language.
2.1.4 Word meaning
According to different perspectives, Word meaning can be classified into grammatical
meaning, lexical meaning, contextual meaning, denotative meaning, connotative meaning and
stylistic meaning.
Grammatical meaning is the component of meaning identical in individual forms of
different words. For example, the tense meaning in the word-forms of verbs (worked, studied,
taught etc), or the case meaning (girl’s, student’), or the plural meaning (boy, boys, woman,
women etc.)
Lexical meaning is the meaning of an isolated word in a dictionary. This component of
meaning is identical in all the forms of the word. For instance, “come, comes, came, coming”
possess different grammatical meanings of tenses, persons, but in each of them, we find the
same lexical meaning expressing the process of movement.
Contextual meaning shows in what sense the word is used, in its primary sense or its
figurative sense. The meaning of the word is defined by the context.
Denotative meaning is also called the referential meaning, which includes multiplicity of
meaning and metaphorical extensions of meaning.
Connotative meaning, on the contrary, is the intentional meaning which a word suggests
or implies. It involves the stylistic reference and the emotive charge proper to the word.
Stylistic meaning conveys the social circumstances of the word’s use. Generally, there are
three kinds of words (common words, formal words and informal words) are used in different
situations.
2.1.5 Sense relations of the word
Sense relations refer to the connection between words which is due to meaning, and
commonly it can be categorized into the following types:
Antonym, relationship of contrast of meaning, including non-gradable, in which
something must be one or the other (on/off; alive/dead); and gradable, in which the entities lie
on a scale (hot/ warm/ cool/ cold)
10