On How to Enlarge College Students’ Vocabulary

1、浅谈怎样扩大大学生词汇量on how to enlarge college students vocabularycontentsabstract .1key words .1ithe significance and aim of the vocabulary learning.1iiproblems students meet in vocabulary learning.3iiithe college students should master a certain amount of vocabulary in specific periods and its workable ana

2、lysis.4ivsome researches on vocabulary learning strategies.54.1 word formation.54.1.1 affixation.6 4.1.1.1 prefixation.64.1.1.2 suffixation.84.1.2 compounding.84.1.2.1 noun compounds.94.1.2.2 adjective compounds.94.1.2.3 verb compounds.94.1.3 conversion.94.1.3.1 conversion to nouns.94.1.4 blending.1

3、14.1.5 clipping.114.1.6 acronymy.114.1.7 back-formation.124.1.8 sound reduplication.124.1.9 communization of proper names.124.2 guessing strategies .124.3 dictionary strategies.134.4 mnemonics: focusing on memory.154.5 learning context and vocabulary learning strategies.17vconclusion.18references.19

4、 摘 要： 随着社会的高速发展，英语现已成为全球的语言，学习英语已经成为这个时代对大学生的基本要求。而词汇的学习是英语学习中一个重要的因素，他们遇到很多阻碍，因此变得非常担心和焦虑，这篇文章展示了一些英语作为第二语言的重要的学习策略。特别是词典策略，猜词策略。这篇文章建议根据不同的学习任务采取不同的学习方法，而不是找最好的词汇学习方法与效果。在这篇文章当中，词汇学习策略是要根据不同的任务，不同的学习者和不同的语境，呼吁读者在不同的时期和任务采取不同的学习策略。关键词：词汇学习 词汇学习策略 猜词策略 词典策略 构词规律abstract: with the high development of

5、 the society, english has become a kind of universal language,learning english is the basic requiement to the students in college of this time. for vocabulary learning is one of the key factors in english learning, almost every student will face with difficulties in vocabulary learning, they become

6、very worried and anxicious about this, so this paper reviews empirical research on vocabulary learning strategies in foreign language. specifically, the review focuses on dictionary strategies, word-guessing strategies. instead of searching for the best strategies that produce the best results, the

7、article proposes that every language learner should choice and use vocabulary learning strategies depend on the different task, the different learner, and the learning context. the paper ends by suggesting people to adopt different methods in different period and task.key words: vocabulary learning

8、vocabulary learning strategies guessing strategies dictionary strategies word formationi. the significance and aim of the vocabulary learningvocabulary is one of the three key factors of language, it is the base of making sentences and expressing peoples thoughts and meanings, and it is also a key c

9、ondition of language communication, so a big amount stable vocabulary of your own becomes one of the keys and symbols of success in language learning. famous learner wilkins (1972) said that without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed. lexist mccarthy (1

10、990) said that no matter how well the student learns the grammar, now matter how successfully he masters the sounds of the second language, without words to express a wide range of meanings communication in that language cannot happen in any meaningful way.especially for english majors, they can rea

11、lly feel the importance of vocabulary in language, they are eager to learn english, they study hard and try to command its knowledge, but at the same time, they are puzzled by the big amount of vocabulary, they can feel the pressure of commanding so many words at the first class just when they enter

12、 their universities. the heavy task of enlarging vocabulary and improving the level of applying vocabulary make some of them worried and some of them feel puzzled. for lacking of the correct directing, many of them just recite the words without knowing the rules and the skills of using, the effect o

13、f doing this is spending a lot of time but remembering the few words, every college student understands that vocabulary learning brings them a lot of difficulties, they also learn that vocabulary learning is one of the key factors in language learning, so how to help college students acquire vocabul

14、ary and improve the efficiency is very popular among college students, they try to apply the linguistic knowledge and the product of vocabulary learning theories to their study, combining the level of college english, they try to find some workable ways and combine the vocabulary learning with conte

15、xt. just because of what i have mentioned above, learning vocabulary becomes more and more important in the study of students. english lexicology is the study of meanings and origins of words, it is necessary to explain and define some basic concepts concerning words and vocabulary. learning some kn

16、owledge about lexicology is really helpful to enlarge students vocabulary, know more about the meanings of vocabulary, improve the ability to use them. so, the way how the college students learn the vocabulary puzzled many experts and students for many years, some helpful ways to learn vocabulary su

17、pplied here is very necessary, everyone who wants to learn english should know some efficient ways and choose some that fit for their learning. every one of us should find the way that suits ourselves to enlarge our vocabulary, improve our english level to attain a high efficiency effect.non-english

18、 majors are asked to pass college english tests band 4, that is, they must have at least 4,000 words before they graduate, or, they will not be allowed graduating. according to the teaching syllable of english majors, before they enter their universities, at least 2000 words must be known, and about

19、 1200 high frequency words and certain amount of phrases, after 2years study, they must know 5500 to 6500 words, using correctly 4000 to 5000 phrases. at the third year, through class teaching and other approaches, the vocabulary must come to 7000 to 9000, among those; they must use correctly 4000 t

20、o 5000 high frequency phrases. when they graduate, they should know 10000 to 12000 words and phrases. learning and enlarging vocabulary, is not only because of the demand of the syllables, but also the college students need in practical learning, in fact, college students have kinds of exams, e.g.,

21、for non-english majors they must pass college english test band 4 and band 6, while english majors, they must pass test for english major band 4 and band 8, let alone toefl, gre and gmat. it is not strange that every college student has one or more dictionaries, they just recite the words in the dic

22、tionaries, possibly they can get high mark in word test, but in practical using, they will feel very confused and dont know which words should be used, so they should find the problems we meet and try to solve them.ii. problems students meet in vocabulary learning.  in practical learning, colle

23、ge students will meet a lot of problems, for they know that after they enter their universities, one of the main tasks of english learning is commanding large amount of vocabulary .for we know that english major ought to know 8,000 words when they are sophomore. others should know at least 4,000 wor

24、ds when they graduate, so the vocabulary becomes the biggest problem in their english learning. here are some problems they met: because therere kinds of exams, they just recite the words in dictionaries, they think that they know a lot of words; in fact, they didnt command them, because they dont k

25、now how to use them, use in that what kind of contexts. we cannot say that they have already mastered them. usually the college students want to recite a lot of words before exams, they dont analyze them, just try to remember how to spell and what their meanings are as more as they can, but these wo

26、rds will escape from our memory soon, so this is not a good idea to recite a certain amount of words in few time, it is really hard for them to handle. they dont know how to accumulate words day by day and how to review, what they try to do is remembering how to spell and what they try to do is reme

27、mbering them, instead of using them, because they want to know a lot of new words in a little time, this kind of thought will make us learn nothing or forget them soon. when they recite a lot of words, what they focus on is their meanings, not their pronunciation, that is not good for their speaking

28、, listening, but speaking and listening are very important in english learning. when they are trying to remember a word, they always connect them with their mother language unconsciously, their pronunciation, and depend overly on the meaning of mother language, this overly dependant mislead them a l

29、ot.iii. the college students should master a certain amount of vocabulary in specific periods and its workable analysis though the amount of english vocabulary is very big, very few of them are used in american or english daily life. there are about 5,000 high-frequency words. these high-freque

30、ncy words are very important, students have to spend a lot of time, work very hard and pay more attention to mastering those words. the rest words in english vocabulary are terminologies or low-frequency words, most of them are formed with various kinds of roots and affixes. nation (1990) pointed ou

31、t that for those low-frequency words, students should learn the guessing strategies according to the word formation and context rather than command one or two of them. that is, some words only need to know their meaning in listening practice and reading, while for some high-frequency words, students

32、 should master all kinds of usage in english learning and can use them freely to communicate in english learning. for these high-frequency words, only knowing their literal meaning is not enough, students should master them. what is mastering a word?1. know its literal meaning.2. clear its pronuncia

33、tion. 3. master its kinds of derived meaning, e.g., workworker, working, workable, workman, workbook and so on 4. know its inferred meaning, e.g. foot (脚), at the foot of mountain (山脚), at the foot of a page (一页的下端), and so on. 5. know the semantic relationship between the words and related words, e

34、.g. mother in chinese means, 母亲，usually, people link it with love, care, tenderness, forgiveness and so on. 6. clear its kinds of grammatical features, for example, the rules of verbs, the countable and uncountable of nouns. 7. know which words it is often used together, for example, “tremble” and “

35、quiver” have the same meanings (颤抖),but we usually say that tremble with fear and quiver with excitement 8. understand its style form. e.g. words used in spoken language is different from that used in written form, for example, domicile is formal official form, residence is written form, home is spo

36、ken form. 9. know its culture and its origin, e.g. pen means feather, and for feather we used to write at that time. 10. clear its linguistic field restriction, e.g. its commendatory term, derogatory term or neuter. e.g. dear old soul (commendatory term), old woman (neuter),but old witch(derogatory

37、term),what we talked above, we need a lot of practice, and this is very important. iv. some researches on vocabulary learning strategies  in order to solve these problems, many learners and researchers studied very hard, so now there are many achievements solving these problems now. but every e

38、nglish learner has to know which ways that suits him and which method he should adopt in particular period. so many learning and teaching strategies have been written, and it is seems impossible for teachers and students to know and use all of them. probably all of them cannot work in all contexts.

39、in fact, good language learners use the very same strategies as bad language learners. but know when to use them and its purpose. however, some may work better in efl context than in efl (english as second language) context, and students who need to prepare themselves for academic work but not for t

40、hose who need english for survival skills. some may work in both contexts. in this section, vocabulary-learning strategies will be explored.4.1 word formationfirst word formation should be mentioned, for this is the most efficient way to learn english vocabulary, it is the way that lead a very impor

41、tant role in both china and foreign country.the expansion of vocabulary in modern english depends on word formation. the most productive are affixation, compounding and conversion. according to pyles and glgeo (1982), words produced through affixation constitute, 30%to 40%of total number of new word

42、s, compounding yields 28%to 30%of all the new words, conversion brings 26%of the new vocabulary into modern english. the rest of the new words come from shortening including clipping and acronym, numbering 8%to 10%, together with 1%to 5%of words born out of blending and other means. we can easily se

43、e that how important the word formation. talking about word-formation patterns means dealing with rules. but a rule of word formation usually differs from a syntactic rule in that it is of limited productivity. that is, not all words which produced by applying the rule are acceptable. the acceptabil

44、ity is gained only when the words have gained an institutional currency in the language, the rules of affixation which includes prefixation and suffixation, compounding including characteristics of compounds and formation of compounds, conversion, including conversion to nouns, verbs and adjectives,

45、 blending, clipping, acronym, include initializes and acronyms, back-formation, sound reduplication and communization of proper names: the expression of vocabulary in modern english depends chiefly on word formation. there is a variety of means being at work now. the most productive are affixation,

46、compounding and conversion. according to pyles and algeo(1982), words produced through affixation constitute 30% to 40% of the total number of new words; compounding yield 28% to 30% of all the new words; conversion bring 26% of the new vocabulary into modern english. the rest of the new words come

47、from shortening including clipping and acronymy, numbering 8% to 10%, together with 1% to 5% of words born out of blending and other means. talking about word-forming patterns means dealing with rules. but a rule of word formation usually differs from a syntactic rule in that it is of limited produc

48、tivity. that is, not all words which are produced by applying the rule are acceptable. the acceptability is gained only when the words have gained an institutional currency in the language.4.1.1 affixation affixation is generally defined as the formation of words by adding word-forming or derivation

49、al affixes to bases. this process is also known as derivation, by which new words are derived from old or base forms. 4.1.1.1 prefixation is the formation of new words by adding prefixes to bases, prefixes do not generally change the word-class of the base but only modify its meaning. negatives pref

50、ixesa- meaning not, without , opposite to as in apolitical, asexual, atypical dis- meaning not the converse of as in disobey, discredit in- same in meaning as for dis- as in inaudible, irresponsibilitynon- meaning not, a productive affix expressing the idea that a person or thing does have the quali

51、ties or characteristics referred to , as in non-classical, non-smoker, non- violencepreservative or probative prefixes de- meaning reversing the action, depriving of , a productive affix, as in decentralize, demystify, dehumanizedis- meaning reversing the action, with verbs as in disallow, disposses

52、s, disunite; also meaning lacking, with adjectives, e.g. disinterested, discoloredun- same in meaning as for de- with verbs as in unbug, unlock, unwrap; but meaning depriving of, releasing from in limited use with nouns to make verbs, e.g. unseal, unhorse, unmaskpejorative prefixesmal- meaning badly

53、, bad added to verbs, participles, adjectives, and abstract nouns, e.g. malformed, malnourished, misadministrationpsuedo- meaning false, imitation, a productive affix with nouns and adjectives, e.g. pseudo-friend, pseudo-parentprefixes of degree or sizeextra- meaning very, productive with adjectives

54、, e.g. extra-large, extra-strongmacro- meaning large, forming technical terms, e.g. macroeconomics, macrostructuremicro- meaning very small the opposite of macro- forming mostly scientific or technical terms, e.g. microcomputer, microsurgerymini- meaning little productive with nouns, e.g. mini-bus,

55、mini-cameraprefixes of orientation and attitudecontra- meaning opposite, contrasting, e.g. contradistinction, constrafactual, constraflowcounter- meaning against, in opposition to, productive with nouns and verbs, e.g. counter-espionage, counter-accusationpro- meaning for, on the side of productive

56、with nouns and adjectives to form adjectives, e.g. pro-democracy, pro-authoritylocative prefixesfore- meaning front part of with nouns, verbs, and adjectives, e.g. forearm, foreheadintra- meaning within productive with nouns and adjectives, e.g. intra-class super- meaning above with nouns e.g. super

57、structure, superscriptprefixes of time and orderfore- meaning before ,with verbs and nouns, e.g. foreword, forethoughtpre- meaning before, in advance, productive with nouns, adjectives and verbs,e.g. pre-trial, pre-retirementre- meaning again, back productive with verbs and nouns, e.g. remarriage, rerea