CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Research Background
English is a fundamental subject in basic education. However，in reality studentsoften lack proper environment to internalize English and trigger unconsciousacquisition of English. The lack of environment also makes it harder for Chinesestudents to reach the proficiency level of English native speakers. English vocabularyis highly necessary for the acquisition of English because it can enhance students’understanding of the sentences and provide more information about the whole text. Agood command of vocabulary will enable students to grasp the language with lesstime, thus acting as a shortcut for students to learn English.
Words are the basic components of a sentence, without which a comprehensiveunderstanding of a text will not be achieved. Vocabulary is vital in the process ofacquiring a language. It is of vital importance for junior middle school students toexpand their vocabulary in large quantities. D.A. Wilkins (1972), a famous linguist,pointed out that, without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabularynothing can be conveyed. As the basic components of language, vocabulary isessential in language learning. The main reason why vocabulary teaching bears afundamental role in English teaching is that it is a carrier of meaning and function asthe medium to express ideas and convey messages. Thus, it is of great practicalsignificance to study the issues about vocabulary teaching. However, it's until 1980sthat the scholars started drawing their attention to vocabulary learning and teaching.Researches show that the current situation of vocabulary study is not satisfactory dueto the influence of conventional teaching method that concentrates on memorizingwords by rote. To deal with it, many scholars are now exploring the filed in order toimprove the current vocabulary teaching and learning.
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1.2 Research Significance and Purpose
The research of the English teachers’ beliefs is significant. Firstly, vocabularyteaching is usually difficult to conduct. On the one hand, understanding of differentteaching methods is necessary. On the other hand, teaching belief is a significantfactor that can’t be ignored. Teachers’ teaching belief plays an important role invocabulary teaching because it can act as guidance to teachers’ behaviors. It’s directlyrelated to the teachers’ teaching quality and working attitude. Therefore, this thesis isto elaborate the present situation and characteristics of teachers’ teaching beliefs inorder to get more insight into teachers’ teaching beliefs and to raise awareness about itin junior middle school teaching. What’s more, the thesis attempts to help teachersunderstand how to form proper teaching beliefs and how to make use of these beliefsto guide teaching practices.
Secondly, the study aims to examine the relationship between teachers' beliefsand their teaching behaviors and investigate some factors that influence the teachingbehaviors. Thus, this study can act as a motivator for junior middle school teachers toreform their teaching beliefs and improve their teaching practices. Also, thelimitations and problems raised in the study can be avoided by teachers in their futureteaching.
Finally, although there is an abundance of research on the teachers' teachingbeliefs, most of them mainly concentrate on the relationship between teachers’teaching beliefs and their practice in college and few empirical researches have beenfound to investigate this relationship in junior middle school. This study is designatedto investigate the relationship between teachers' teaching beliefs and junior middleschool vocabulary teaching behaviors.
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CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Teachers’ Beliefs
As we know, belief is regarded as the most importance indicator when teachersare making a decision. The judgments and opinions of teachers can eventually affecttheir teaching behaviors in their classroom. In order to have a deep understanding ofthe teacher’s belief, the definition of belief, and teachers’ belief, and the categories ofteacher’s belief will be reviewed.
2.1.1 Definition of Beliefs
Belief is a familiar word that is often used in our daily life. What’s the exactmeaning of belief? It's hard to give it a concrete definition. Many scholars are tryingto give their own definition but their opinions differ from one another because oftheir different perspectives. The scholars highlight their ideas in the arguments.
Li Jiahui, Liu Yibing(2010) argued that beliefs are the conviction of theinpidual's basic knowledge, understanding, and assumptions about people, nature,and society.
Pajares(1992) considers beliefs to be “a conduct that’s under disguise” , whichcontains “ reasonable beliefs, explicit propositions and teachers’ subjective, implicitconcepts, opinions, teaching system, propositions, judgments, practical theories,untested assumption.”
Rokeach(1968) is one of the researchers who mentioned the" belief" in theearly period. Personal preference, words play a key role in the expression of beliefs.He analyzed it from the perspective of sociology. He defined beliefs as "anything thatcan be inferred from their behaviors
Nesper(1987)marks that beliefs are closely related to our thinking. It’s based onwhat we know but it offers an affective filter which may redefine or reshape oursubsequent process of thinking and cause some change in our information processingpattern.
Xu Quan (2011) agrees that beliefs can be viewed as “ people’s judgment aboutthe events under the specific situation”. The judgment are based on our personalexperience, knowledge and some other factors
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2.2 Vocabulary Teaching Beliefs
2.2.1 Vocabulary Teaching
Vocabulary refers to the words that make up a language. Brown (1994) believedvocabulary to be the most critical element in forming a language. Image the wholesentence is a building, the vocabulary functions as the bricks that are applied to theshaping of the building. Thus, it’s impossible to shape a building of language withoutvocabulary.
Language is an essential tool for people to express ideas and communicate witheach other. The vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar constitute the three basicelements of language. Grammar is an orderly system made up of words and sentencesaccording to some internal rules. It is observed that these three elements are theimportant constituents of language. The study of pronunciation and grammar baseon the study of vocabulary. As D.A.Willkins, an England linguist, elaborated thestatus of vocabulary in communication in Linguistics and Language Teaching:“Without grammar, many things can be expressed. Without vocabulary, nothing canbe expressed.” Vocabulary is a key factor to determine whether the listening, speaking,writing and translation activity can go on. In other words, these four parts will beaffected to some degrees because of lack of vocabulary.
In 1930s, Vocabulary Limit Campaign gained popularity among the foreignscholars in the linguistic circles. The so-called vocabulary limit is the practice wherelimited vocabulary is used according to the word list or other standards in preparationfor language teaching and reading materials. In 1960s, linguists began to turn totransformation linguistics advocated by Chomsky. Its emergency increasinglystrengthened the viewpoint of “ vocabulary limit ” , which made people believevocabulary is a painful and irregular. In 1970s, communicative teaching method madepeople rethink the role vocabulary plays in teaching. People’s cognition of thevocabulary significance means a learning objective of the vocabulary itself, so theybegan to pay attention to vocabulary teaching and its status in foreign languageteaching. Since 1990s, vocabulary research and teaching was greatly valued. Most ofthe scholars researched how to explore, memorize ad use the vocabulary.
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3.1 Research Framework............................................15
3.2 Research Questions..................................... 16
3.3 Participants................................16
CHAPTER FOUR RUSULTS AND DISCUSSIONS............................... 21
4.1 Results and Discussions from Questionnaire Data.............................21
4.1.1 Belief in Vocabulary Teaching Objective.................................23
4.1.2 Belief in Vocabulary Teaching Content..................................24
CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSIONS.........................................48
5.1 Major Findings................................ 48
5.1.1 The Current Situation of Junior Middle School English Teachers’Vocabulary Teaching Beliefs.......................48
5.1.2 The Correlations between Vocabulary Teaching Beliefs and Behaviorsof Junior Middle School English Teachers.....................49
CHAPTER FOUR RUSULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
4.1 Results and Discussions from Questionnaire Data
In terms of current situation of junior middle school English teachers’ teachingbeliefs, the author can draw the conclusion from the statistics from questionnaire. Inthis questionnaire, the current situation of junior middle school English teachers’teaching belief will be investigated from the following five dimensions: the vocabularyteaching objective, the vocabulary teaching content, the vocabulary teaching method,the vocabulary test and the teaching beliefs. The Likert five-point scale will be adoptedin the research.
On the teaching belief dimension, the highest score is 20 while the lowest score is4. The average score is 12. If the score is 12 or higher than 12, it shows that the theteachers agree with the ideas in the questionnaire. On the other hand, if the score islower than 12, it can assume that the teachers disagree with the opinion in thequestionnaire. On the other four dimensions, The score of each question range from 1 to5 and the average score is 3. Therefore, if the respondent’s score is 3 or over 3，it canassume that the respondent is agreed with the point that is raised in the questionnaire. Ifthe score of the question is less than 3 point, it indicates that the respondent disagreeswith the view illustrated in each question.
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CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSIONCLUSIONSS
5.1 Major Findings
The study aims to explore the present situation of teachers’ vocabulary teachingbeliefs. Furthermore, this paper explores the relationship between teachers’ beliefs andtheir teaching behaviors and investigates some factors that cause the inconsistencybetween teaching beliefs and teaching behaviors. The author collects data byconducting the survey, interview and class observation. The major findings are stated asfollows:
5.1.1 The Current Situation of Junior Middle School English Teachers’Vocabulary Teaching Beliefs
In junior middle school, the teachers are willing to show a new tendency toabandon the conventional way of teaching and adopt the new teaching methods. Thispaper draws the following conclusions from the interviews.
In terms of vocabulary teaching objective, most teachers believe that the objectivesof English vocabulary teaching should not only focus on meeting the requirements ofcurriculum but also aid the development of students’ comprehensive skills such aslistening, speaking, reading and writing. They pay more attention to guide students toapply the vocabulary to the real context. They are not satisfied with only teachingstudents the core vocabulary in the textbooks the students’ ability to use vocabulary toexpress themselves and to communicate with others is given priority.
In terms of vocabulary teaching content, most teachers realize that it's necessary toteach students vocabulary learning strategy and approaches. They believe thatvocabulary teaching should not only introduce the basic meaning of the words, but alsohelp students grasp vocabulary learning strategies and enable them to learn vocabularyindependent of teachers’ instruction after class.
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