Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Vocabulary is the basic element of language. Without it, language would no longer exist. Therefore, foreign language study is closely associated with vocabulary study. So the great importance of vocabulary in English study is pointed out, but vocabulary can’t be learnt by rote. In order to solve the problem of “time-consuming and poorly-efficient” in junior high school students’ English vocabulary learning, the thesis offers some interesting and efficient strategies of vocabulary learning, called Communicative Approach, which will stimulate the students’ potential and their interest in English learning, and finally enlarge their vocabulary.

Key words: vocabulary teaching; Communicative Language Teaching Approach；Junior High School

摘要：词汇是语言的基本元素。没有词汇，语言将不存在，所以外语学习离不开词汇学习。本文指出了英语词汇学习的重要性，也强调了词汇学习绝不是简单地死记硬背。针对初中学生在词汇学习上的“费时低效”问题，本文提出了合理运用交际教学法学习词汇的策略，旨在鼓励初中教师和学生积极采用交际法学习英语词汇，激发学生学习英语的兴趣和潜力，从而扩大词汇量。

关键词：词汇教学；交际法；初中

1.    Introduction
In China, teaching English as a foreign language has a long history of a century or so. It has become increasingly clear that a more direct understanding of the language learning process is needed to improve learning methods… Moreover, the research on certain factors or variables and their interactions has focused on gaining insight into the individual differences in second language acquisition, notably the second language learning strategy. It has been widely acknowledged that language-processing strategies exist and influence SLA.
But “during the practice directed by different kinds of approaches or methods, it is found that none of them can be very successful in English teaching without students’ development of vocabulary…The root of the problems is that students have great weakness in vocabulary.”
Why? Because the teaching and learning of vocabulary has never aroused the same degree of interest as that of grammatical competence, contrastive analysis, reading or writing, which have received considerable attention from scholars and teachers. So from here, we can see though English is learnt or taught widely in China in recent years, generally speaking, learners or teachers pay more attention to translation in English teaching. It seems that vocabulary is never stressed enough in English learning and teaching. In reality, emphasis on vocabulary is reasonable and feasible.