论文总字数：30088字

摘 要

建构主义学习理论认为，学习是学生主动进行意义建构的过程。它强调学生的学习主体的作用，以及在教学过程中，教师应发挥指导性的作用。本文依据建构主义学习理论，探讨了如何构建中学英语词汇教学模式。本文认为，在中学英语词汇过程中，我们应坚持提升学生的主体地位，激发学生的内在动力和培养学生的哲学思辨能力等教学原则。同时，我们应该探索一些教学活动去培养学生的词汇学习策略和运用能力，以及增强语言自主学习能力。这些教学活动包括创造学习情境，开展游戏教学和联想教学，以及组织合作学习。

关键词：词汇教学；建构主义理论；教学活动

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Constructivism Theory 3

3.1 The Origin and Development of Constructivism Theory 3

3.2 Constructivist Views of Learning 4

3.3 Constructivist Views of Teaching 5

4. Principles of Constructivism-based English Vocabulary Teaching 5

4.1 Improving the Dominant Position of Students 5

4.2 Cultivating Students’ Initiative 6

4.3 Fostering the Philosophical Thinking 6

5. Teaching Activities for English Vocabulary Learning 7

5.1 Creating Learning Situations 7

5.2 Carrying out Game Teaching 9

5.3 Employing Associative Teaching 10

5.4 Organizing Cooperative Learning 11

6. Conclusion 12

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

Vocabulary is the important element of English, and it is a basis of mastering and using English well. It is necessary for students to learn enough vocabulary, which can benefit them in listening, speaking, reading and writing, meanwhile, which can also help students really master the English language. Therefore, based on the above facts, vocabulary teaching is very significant in middle school English teaching. However, owing to the influence of a lot of factors, the actual effect of the current middle school English vocabulary teaching is not very ideal, and it mainly has the following shortages:

First of all, the English vocabulary teaching of middle school mainly focuses on the role of teachers, thus it ignores students’ initiative function. At present, English vocabulary teaching is still affected by traditional ideas, and it basically emphasizes the leading role of teaching and usually lets students learn knowledge passively. Because of the above reasons, this model is not conducive for students to develop the independent thinking and the initiative learning, which reduces the students enthusiasm and produces the effect of unsatisfactory in English vocabulary teaching.

In addition, vocabulary teaching in middle school usually tends to interpret the words in isolation, thus it ignores the creation of context. In traditional teaching, some teachers teach nearly every word that exists in the word list. For convenience, some teachers haven’t taken the context into consideration and they explain a word out of the context, which makes some teachers become the “experts” of dictionaries. This method that advocates the teaching without the context lets many students feel that learning vocabulary is boring and lets them lost interest in learning vocabulary.

What’s more, vocabulary teaching, a basic part of middle school English teaching, often attaches more significance to the literal meaning of vocabulary, thus it ignores the cultural connotation of words. Because language is closely connected with culture, it is impossible to grasp and use the national language accurately without the culture of a nation. In class, some teachers only explain the literal meaning of words rather than introducing the corresponding cultural connotation. As a result, this practice makes students learn a little knowledge and can not master the language very well.

Finally, English vocabulary teaching of middle school lays stress on the mechanical memorizing, thus ignores the method of interesting memory. In class, some teachers directly teach many words and then let students recite these words after class. And they seldom apply the methods that can make the students memory more efficient. Therefore, students are prone to be whiny during the process of mechanical memorizing, meanwhile, vocabulary teaching is hardly to achieve a success.

In order to avoid the above questions, this paper tries to explore the middle school English vocabulary teaching on the basis of constructivism theory. And the theme of this paper can lead a new round of reform in the middle school English vocabulary teaching, which can let the vocabulary learning become more efficient and interesting, thus enable students to learn English very well.

2. Literature Review

Vocabulary teaching is very significant in middle school English teaching. At present, many scholars have done a lot of researches and obtained a lot of achievements from different angles in this respect. There are some scholars who have put forward that teachers can apply the theory of semantic field to the middle school vocabulary teaching. They pointed out “the theory of semantic field is an important theory of linguistics, and it emphasizes the mutual contact of different words on the meaning. And this inner connection enables different words to constitute the same semantic field. Therefore, the vocabulary teaching modes that guided by the theory of semantic field can improve the efficiency of English vocabulary learning to a certain degree.” There are also some scholars who hold that the theory of double code can benefit the English vocabulary teaching, which can improve the effect of long-term memory, thus helps students learn the English vocabulary very well. In addition, some other scholars point out that the conceptual blending theory can also do a favor in the improvement of vocabulary teaching.(Tian et al) In general, although their views are presented from different aspects of second language acquisition, they all hope to improve the current situation of middle school English vocabulary teaching.

Constructivism theory emphasizes that knowledge is obtained by the initiative construction of students and some other conditions, such as certain contexts and the use of necessary learning materials. Acquiring knowledge depends on students themselves rather than teachers. Therefore, based on the constructivism theory, the middle school English vocabulary teaching should be student-centered, emphasizing the active role of students, meanwhile, vocabulary teaching should try to pay more attention to the importance of situation teaching.

3. Constructivism Theory

3.1 The Origin and Development of Constructivism Theory

The constructivism theory has emerged a new viewpoint since the late 1980s, and it has led an important reform in learning theory after the cognitivism theory. The earliest presenter can be traced back to the Swiss psychologist Piaget(J.Piaget). He believed that children construct their knowledge about the outside world gradually when they are kept in the process of interaction of the surrounding environment. At the same time, he also points out that the interaction between children and environment usually experiences two basic processes: ”assimilation” and “adaptation”. Assimilation refers to the process of absorbing and applying the relevant information about the external environment; adaptation refers to the process that students’ cognitive structure has to restructure and transform as a result of the change of the external environment. And the balance between the cognitive individual and the surrounding environment is achieved by assimilation and adaptation. Then, based on the theory of Piaget, Bruner put forward the theory of discipline structure, and he advocated the teaching of finding; Sterberg and Katz emphasized that the individual initiation played a key role in the process of constructing cognitive structure, and they seriously made an exploration about how to play the initiative in that process. Vygotsky insisted that the social culture and historical background are very important in the cognitive process. All these studies enrich and develop the constructivism theory, and create conditions for practical application in the teaching process.

3.2 Constructivist Views of Learning

At first, constructivism theory emphasizes that the essence of learning is that students construct actively in accordance with their own experiences and knowledge, instead of being taught by teachers. Of sure, to some extent, students need to depend on the help of others (such as teachers, partners and so on) and need to make full use of the necessary learning materials during this process.

In addition, it emphasizes the importance of certain environments, and it points out that the student’s learning is conducted under certain environment, which implies the influence of society, and which indicates learning is not an independent individual behavior. Based on the above-mentioned views, constructivism theory holds that situation, cooperation, conversation and the construction of meaning are four elements of learning environment. And it insists that these elements can be explained explicitly as follows:

Firstly, situation refers to the learning environment that must be beneficial for students to complete the active construction of knowledge, that is to say, teaching design needs to take the creation of situation into consideration and regard it as the most important content of teaching design. Secondly, cooperation usually exists in the process of learning. And it plays an important role in the collection and analysis of materials, the presentment and verification of hypothesis, the evaluation of learning outcomes and the final construction of meaning. In addition, conversation is an indispensable link in the process of cooperation, and cooperation can be carried out only by the help of conversation. The process of cooperation also is the process of conversation. During this process, each learner’s thinking is shared by the entire learning community, so conversation is an important means in the construction of meaning. At last, the construction of meaning is the ultimate goal of the whole learning process. It refers to the process of constructing the properties, laws and inner links of things. During the process of learning, helping students construct knowledge is to help them achieve a more profound comprehension about the learning contents, such as the properties, laws and inner links of things. In summary, acquiring knowledge depends on the ability that learners construct knowledge and meaning according to their own experience, instead of depending on the ability of memorizing and reciting.

3.3 Constructivist Views of Teaching

Constructivism theory provides many views in teaching. At first, it emphasizes that teaching should be student-centered and should arouse the enthusiasm of student adequately. Secondly, teachers should play an important role in the guidance and organization of teaching. And helping students complete the construction of meaning is the main duty of teachers. In addition, teachers should make full use of the elements of situation, cooperation, conversation and the construction of meaning. Because constructivism theory points out that only when teachers do that can they help students learn more efficiently. What’s more, constructivism theory emphasizes that teaching should take the original knowledge as a growth point of new knowledge and should guide students to create new knowledge from the original knowledge. At last, constructivism theory holds that the purpose of teaching is not only to make students know the world, but also to cultivate the ability of grasping the essence of things.

4. Principles of Constructivism-based English Vocabulary Teaching

4.1 Improving the Dominant Position of Students

Due to the influence of many factors, the effect of the current middle school English vocabulary teaching is not very ideal, and it mainly has the following problem. Firstly, the English vocabulary teaching of middle school tends to interpret words in isolation, and ignores the creation of context. Secondly, the middle school English vocabulary teaching usually attaches great importance to the literal meaning of words, thus ignores the cultural connotation of words. In addition, vocabulary teaching of middle school emphasizes the methods of mechanical memory, and ignores the interesting memory. What’s more, the English vocabulary teaching of middle school ignores the active roles of student. However, because constructivism theory holds that teaching should be connected with situation and should be student-centered, it is significant to apply constructivism theory to middle school English vocabulary teaching.

4.2 Cultivating Students’ Initiative

Constructivism theory emphasizes that teaching should take the original knowledge as a growth point of new knowledge and should guide students to create new knowledge from the original knowledge, instead of ignoring the existing knowledge and experience of students. At the same time, constructivism theory also emphasizes that teaching is not the transmission of knowledge, but is the processing and transformation of knowledge.

English vocabulary is a huge system, and each person’s experience is different, so different people will use their own unique way to learn that vocabulary when they face a new vocabulary. Therefore, according to constructivism theory, English teachers can encourage students to boldly innovate and actively form their own unique method of vocabulary learning on the basis of scientific methods. Meanwhile, teachers can also encourage students to find a variety of vocabulary learning methods and let them find the relations between words during the teaching process, which will greatly cultivate the initiative and creativity of students. Therefore, applying the constructivism theory to middle school English vocabulary teaching is of a great significance for cultivating the initiative and creativity of students.

4.3 Fostering the Philosophical Thinking

Constructivism theory holds that the purpose of teaching is not only to make students know the world, but also to cultivate the ability of grasping the essence of things. This theory requires that students must have the dialectic thought and the ability of abstract thinking. Therefore, applying constructivism theory to English vocabulary teaching is beneficial to foster the philosophical thinking and cognitive ability of students.

5. Teaching Activities for English Vocabulary Learning

5.1 Creating Learning Situations

Constructivism theory believes that study should be associated with social and cultural background, and knowledge should be learned in the certain situation. Meanwhile, learners can complete the construction of new knowledge by the process of assimilation and adaptation. Applying this theory to vocabulary teaching, teachers should put words in the specific environment instead of putting words as the language information in isolation. Only by doing this can students’ original knowledge experience be activated, which can help students complete the construction of new words by the relation between new words and original knowledge. This type of so-called situation not only refers to the virtual scene, but also refers to the abstract context of vocabulary. Therefore, in order to enable students to master and use English vocabulary preferably, vocabulary teaching can adopt the following methods:

5.1.1 Designing Virtual Scenes

Because students like to study in the scene, teachers can design some virtual plots and make students learn words in that plots. For example, in the classroom, teachers can design some plots of telephone communication that are related to the vocabulary of this class, and then let students imitate the situation and use the phone preps for to develop the real communication, which helps students learn English vocabulary in mutual conversations. In all, this sort of teaching method not only can arouse the interest of students, but also can construct the knowledge of vocabulary.

5.1.2 Designing Sentences and Context

On the one hand, before teaching words, teachers can establish some relationships between new words and daily things, and then design some relevant sentences to present new words. This kind of teaching method can not only arouse the enthusiasm of students, but also can let vocabulary learning become more efficient. For example, in accordance with the word “flower”, teachers can design some sentences as follows: 1) The plant has a very beautiful red flower; 2) The plant flowers in July. In the above-mentioned sentences, we can have a general idea of the word “flower”. In the first sentence, the word “flower”is a noun. And in the second sentence, the word “flower” is a verb, and it means blossom. In a word, students can accept and understand new words more easily with the help of this method.

On the other hand, teachers can put new words in the certain context and let students guess the meaning of words through the relationships of context. This method changes the passive memory into the active learning, which can help students understand the meanings of words deeply. For example, reading the sentence “Tomorrow will be a busy day, so please list your must-dos as soon as possible, and pay less attention to those inessential things,” we can guess the meaning of the word “must-dos”. According to the above, we can know that tomorrow will be a very busy day, at the same time, we can get a message that don’t pay attention to those inessential things from the later, therefore, we can have no difficulty in drawing a conclusion that the word “must-dos” refers to things that must do.

5.1.3 Combining Teaching with the Cultural Connotations of Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the carrier of culture, so the vocabulary teaching should be connected with the cultural background and connotations, which makes students have a more accurate mastery about vocabulary. Sometimes, because the same words may have different meanings in different cultures, teachers should let students pay attention to the different meanings in different cultures. For example, the word “ambitious” is a neutral word in the English language, so it both has commendatory meaning and derogatory sense. However, the meaning in Chinese is different from those, and it only refers to the derogatory sense. In addition, the word “red” is a symbol of good fortune, happiness, loyalty and prosperity in our culture, but in western culture, the word “red” refers to the color of blood for the most part, and it is often associated with violence and danger for westerners, such as red-battle (the meaning of bloody battle), red hands (the meaning of bloody hands), and a red flag (the meaning of dangerous signal). Meanwhile, the word “red” is also related to the losses and angry in the west, such as in the red (the meaning of debt), and red with anger (the meaning of angry).

5.2 Carrying out Game Teaching

Constructivism theory holds that the essence of study is the active construction of knowledge rather than the passive acceptance of knowledge for students. This requires that teachers should try to adopt some interesting methods in vocabulary teaching, only in this way, students’ enthusiasm and initiative can be fully aroused and mobilized.

A feasible method is that teachers lead students to learn vocabulary in the game. Although the vocabulary game is a form of entertainment, it can also be integrated with knowledge and interest. Therefore, it can also be used as a teaching method, and it also is a kind of method that students prefer. This method enables students to remember new words very deeply and master the recondite words in interesting activities. Learning vocabulary in game can enhance students’ memory as well as the enthusiasm of learning vocabulary. For example, teachers can design some quiz games according to the teaching contents, which can let students learn vocabulary efficiently in a state of relation. Just like some exercises in vocabulary teaching, “---This is something you do before a test. ---Study; ---It’s under your nose. ---Mouth; ---It’s a very large fruit. ---Water-melon,” these exercises can help students learn vocabulary efficiently. Besides, teachers can design some numeral cards and label some numerals when the teaching contents are numerals, and then teachers guide students to learn vocabulary in the game of “Who has number…….” This method not only can improve the efficiency of learning vocabulary, but also can exercise the ability of memory.

5.3 Employing Associative Teaching

Constructivism theory believes that learning is not a process of passive absorption and repeated practice, but is a process that individual constructs knowledge actively under the interaction (assimilation and adaptation) of individual and environment. And constructivism theory emphasizes that teaching should regard the original knowledge of learners as a growing point of new knowledge, and then guide learners learn new knowledge and experience from the original knowledge and experience. At the same time, constructivism theory also emphasizes that teaching is the processing and transformation of knowledge rather than the transmission of knowledge.

On the basis of this theory, teachers should help students analysize contents in terms of vocabulary teaching, give students the freedom of imagination, stimulate students’ associative thinking, then let students actively assimilate and find the new knowledge from the original cognitive structure, and guide them give a certain sense to the new knowledge according to the connection between new and old knowledge. In the English vocabulary teaching, the activity of associative teaching can not only make students memorize words efficiently, but also can let the boring vocabulary learning become lively and interesting. For example, according to the word “hatred”, we can know that the foregoing part refers to the hat, and the latter part refers to the color, so the associative meaning of this word is that little red riding hood very hates the wolf, and the meaning of the word “hatred” can be concluded; in view of the word “forget”, we can know that the foregoing part refers to the intention, and the latter part refers to the meaning of acquiring, so the associative meaning is that we need to forget the old things for the purpose of getting new things; with a view to the word “ache”, we can get the idea that the foregoing part refers to the quantity, and the following part means the car from the perspective of Chinese, so the associative meaning is that a car hit a man, and he looked very painful. Making full use of this method, vocabulary teaching can become very interesting and relatively easy. Besides, based on the affix and root, teachers can help students learn the relevant vocabulary by using the method of associative teaching. For example, with regard to the word “environment”, we can associate it with some affixes, so we can learn the word “environmental” and the word “environmentalist”.

5.4 Organizing Cooperative Learning

Constructivism theory believes that cooperation is one of the four elements of learning and teaching, at the same time, it plays an important role in the construction of knowledge and ability. That is to say, constructivism theory points out that knowledge and meaning are acquired through the cooperation of two or more individuals. And it emphasizes the function of learning community, meanwhile, it thinks that the learning community is the premise and carrier of the existence of individuals; besides, constructivism theory regards the process of cooperation or conversation as the core of teaching.

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