“正如我们发现的，本语人以词汇为基础做选择。使自己受限于语言项目与规则方法的学习者将不被看作是他们渴望的语言团体的一员。”，我们从上面斯凯恩的这两句话中知道词汇对于一个人理想的使用语言是至关重要的。我们同样从“没有词汇，没有语言。”这句话中意识到词汇的重要性。如果一种语言不被使用，那么它会逐渐消失。词汇使用能力是使用语言的基础。因此，在本篇论文中，我着眼于词汇使用能力的发展并且立足于此角度提供了一些提高语言使用能力的方法。毕竟，一个人的词汇使用能力为其语言使用能力奠定了重要基础。
We can learn from the statements ‘As we have seen, native speakers make choices which are lexically based. Learners who restrict themselves to item and rule approaches to language will be forever marked as non-members of the speech community they aspire to.’(Skehan39) that vocabulary is of importance to one’s satisfactory use of language. We can also realize the significance of vocabulary from this sentence ‘No vocabulary, no language’. If a certain language is out of use, it will die gradually. The basis of language use is vocabulary use ability. Consequently, in this writing, I will focus on development of the vocabulary usage ability by which I try to find out ways to improve language use ability. After all, one’s vocabulary usage ability is a fundamental foundation for their language use ability.
Learners’ language use ability Language, as a tool, is intended for communication. Learners who fail to use the language when communicating with others or carrying on some writing tasks will gradually lose their confidence in their language learning. If the situation becomes serious, they are discouraged from using learning strategies when they need some to achieve effective learning of language. Thus their language learning ended in failure. And learners who keep using their language in their daily life are more likely to be successful learners. Because they always enjoy a sense of achievement when their meanings were understood .So learners language use ability is of importance.
Roles vocabulary use ability play in language use capacity “Vocabulary is by far the most sizeable and unmanageable component in the learning of any language, whether a foreign or one’s mother tongue, because of tens of thousands of meaning”, according to Lord (Oxford39). As Lord suggests, vocabulary is a challenging task in language learning due to its diverse meanings. And the change of word meanings according to different context genuinely can reflect the richness and power of the language. Vocabulary is a meaning carrier in language and some of them certain cultural phenomena. And the purpose of learning and instruction of vocabulary are supposed to enhance student’s ability to use-----both comprehend and produce their language. So conclusions can be that vocabulary use ability can enhance students’ ability to comprehend and produce the language they are dealing with in terms of vocabulary use ability.
Development of vocabulary usage capacity From learning to using vocabulary and then to developing the ability to use words, of course, much effort should be made. Brown and Payne put forward a clear model where the strategies fall into five essential steps:① having sources for encountering new words; ②getting a clear image, either visual or auditory or both, for the forms of new words; ③learning the meaning of the words;④ making a strong memory connection between forms and meanings of the words and ⑤using the words(Hatch and Brown373).Five steps mentioned above seemed to be very familiar to us but we fail to use them in the process of our vocabulary learning because as Voltaire said “Common sense is not that common.” In the following part, I will present my interpretation of this model with the help of related materials. Step1: Having sources for encountering new words As to encountering new words, it seemed as if there were nothing special in this step, because sources are everywhere for new words. From the points of my view, we should place emphasis the quality of materials we choose as sources for new word. The quality of the materials should be measured at least with these two criteria: authenticity and multiplicity. One can encounter new words by means of reading books, listening to TV or radio and reading newspapers and magazines. Books with a lot of discourse that would never happen in real life will discourage students from learning words incidentally. So teachers and parents, as facilitators of students choose the ideal materials. Learners should have opportunities to encounter with the same word in multiple sources rather than in just one source. For one source can provide learners with one context where new words are used, and if the sources are more, the contexts for new words will be more, which may help increase learners knowledge about new words and their meanings. Step2：Getting a clear image, either visual or auditory or both, for the forms of new words Getting the word form as the second step is apparently important, for we will be less confident in producing the language when we can’t make sure the form of the words. Because form affects sound and at the meantime it carries the meaning of specific word.As the form of a word can be represented by a root or by attaching affixes to a root. Many word forms should be memorized by analyzing roots and affixes that words contain. According to White and his colleague’s discovery (White, Sowell and Yanagihara1989) most frequent three prefixes in English are: un-, re-, and in-, which is helpful to their memorize word forms as well as word meanings. For example, re- means “again”, so reread the text means that after finishing reading the text read it another time. Another way to memorize word form is that let the encountering object of real life be the reminder of the certain target word, and if possible, say out the target word and leave a picture in your mind, and simultaneously you can check whether you can spell the target word or not. If you can, that will be fine; if you can’t spell the target word, you can ask help from others immediately. This is helpful to retrieve words from memory. |
