Study on College English Vocabulary Teaching from Bloom’s Taxonomy

School of International Studies,Anshan Normal University,Anshan,China Email：hyr99999@126.com

[Abstract]The current college students’English reading ability is insufficient,which is mainly due to the lack of vocabulary.Based on the understanding and research of the connotation of Bloom’s Taxonomy and the investigation of the current situation of College English vocabulary teaching.This paper puts forward the study of Bloom’s Taxonomy on College English vocabulary teaching,so as to help college students improve their English level.

[Keywords]College English;Vocabulary;Teaching

Introduction

At present,college students generally take various English graded tests,but these graded tests do not greatly improve the English level of college students.it may result in a lack of motivation for students to learn English.English vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary have a profound influence on the language ability,pragmatic ability and organizational ability of English learners.Therefore,vocabulary learning plays an important role in English learning and enough attention should be paid.The Bloom’s taxonomy can play a crucial part in this process.It uses the goal classification method to guide students’learning and allow teachers to change the current teaching mode in order to improve students’English proficiency quickly.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

The idea of establishing a classification system of educational goals began in 1948.Bloom’s theory of taxonomy was gradually developed on the basis of this idea.It aims to provide standards for evaluating students’learning results in order to guide teaching practice.Bloom proposed that educational goals can be divided into three areas:cognition,emotion and operation(Wang,2000,pp.65-71).According to the gradual process of human cognitive law from simple to complex,from specific to abstraction,among them,the classification of educational goals in the cognitive domain is divided into six levels:memory,understanding,application,analysis,evaluation,and innovation(Zhu&Ma,2014,pp.67-71).Forty-five years later,Krathwohl,one of Bloom’s partners,and Bloom’s student Anderson revised the Bloom’s taxonomy again.The revised Bloom’s taxonomy levels from low to high are:remember,understand,apply,analyze,evaluate and create.The revised Bloom’s taxonomy makes design and evaluation of teachers and students easier and clearer during the teaching and learning process.It is widely used to guide teachers to organize teaching activities to meet students’cognitive levels from simple or low-level to complex or advanced claim.Many researchers believe that Bloom’s taxonomy theory can help colleges and universities formulate scientific talent training goals and evaluation standards.And that teaching practices based on this theory have a significant positive impact on students’understanding of themselves and accurate positioning.At present,the research of Western industry scholars mainly focuses on the impact of Bloom’s cognitive field of education goal classification theory on the cultivation of college students’thinking ability(Anderson＆Krathwohl,2001).

In our country,the application of Bloom’s taxonomy theory in educational practice provides an important theoretical basis for the establishment of the teaching evaluation system and management goal system.At present,most researchers in our country apply this theory to the process of formulating college curriculum teaching plans and teaching evaluation standards,but there are not many studies that combine specific disciplines or professional talent training.The related practices and analysis are even more lacking.

Current Situation of College English Vocabulary Teaching

Vocabulary is an important part of language and it is the carrier of language.For students to master a foreign language,having a large number of vocabularies is essential.However,lack of vocabulary in current has become a serious constraint on the development and improvement of students’English ability.At present,the vocabulary of many college students is the same as that of high school,or even lower than that of high school.This causes many students to read an English article neither knowing the meaning of the words,nor even knowing the meaning of sentences.They don’t know how to understand the passage.In order to expand the vocabulary,many students work hard all day,but have little effect.This will reduce students’interest in English learning quickly and it will form a vicious circle.Therefore,strengthening vocabulary teaching,improving the efficiency of vocabulary teaching,and expanding students’vocabulary has become an urgent matter for college English teaching.Changing traditional teaching concepts and backward teaching methods,exploring effective vocabulary teaching methods is an important part of college English teaching reform.The syllabus puts forward higher requirements on the vocabulary that students should master when they entering the university.From this point of view,it is not enough to expand the students’vocabulary by relying solely on the students’subjective efforts.Teachers should use the limited time in class to guide students in appropriate methods.

In the process of college English teaching,a lot of teaching mode,such as“cracking duck”is adopted.Teachers only explain to students based on the content of the textbook.The cultural background,historical stories and existing problems behind this knowledge are sometimes taken away or even not mentioned.They just tell the students that those are the key points of the exam and which parts can be ignored.This increases the boringness of the classroom and reduces the fun.The students may lose their enthusiasm and initiative in vocabulary learning,so that they can indeed get high scores in the test.But in this vicious cycle,the student becomes a test machine rather than a thoughtful person with independent personality.It ignores the subject status of students.

In the entire college English vocabulary teaching model,most English teachers are chattering on the stage by themselves,regardless of whether the students listen carefully,whether they are interested in listening or not.The teachers just teach them by themselves.They give the students some key parts after the lecture.The key point is to let the students recite.This seriously neglects the student's dominant position and causes students to lose their interests in vocabulary.Such a vicious circle is not conducive to the physical and mental development of students.Teachers are only lecturing and do not give students the opportunity to explore and think independently.It is difficult for students to learn to discover and think by themselves.In this way,the meaning of education itself is lost,and it is difficult to gain from it.At the same time,the teacher’s authority also prevents students from asking questions or asking questions they don’t understand.The classroom atmosphere is dull and there is no interaction between the teacher and the students.English vocabulary itself is a subject that lacks interest.If the atmosphere in the classroom is dull,students will be less interested in learning vocabulary.If teachers do not change their teaching methods to construct interesting classrooms,students will fill uncomfortable.Students do not understand the knowledge points by themselves,and then recite vocabulary again and again.All of these will increase the psychological burden of students.In this way,students will not use the knowledge they have learned flexibly.They also lose their interest in learning vocabulary gradually.

The Study of Bloom’s Taxonomy on College English Vocabulary Teaching

Vocabulary Classification Mode

The core content of Bloom’s Taxonomy is to formulate a reasonable teaching grading system.The grading system is in line with the psychological development and construction of students.At the same time,it can realize the gradual progress of the teaching process,so that students have a deeper understanding of knowledge.

In the process of college English teaching,the vocabulary classification system mainly includes the following three aspects:basic vocabulary,high vocabulary and higher vocabulary.The basic vocabulary refers to the 3,500 vocabulary that students have mastered during high school.Mastering these vocabularies can have a general understanding of the content of the article during the reading process.You will understand the characters in the article.It can be seen that this is the basic requirement for college students’English vocabulary mastery.High vocabulary refers to the 5000 vocabulary that students have mastered during the freshmen year and sophomore year.Mastering these vocabulary enables students to have a deeper understanding when reading English articles.It is a process of improvement.Normally,students reach this stage can start to read English articles independently,and have a deeper understanding of the content of the articles.A high vocabulary can meet the requirements of various English exams of students,especially the requirements of the college English test.Higher vocabulary refers to the 10,000 vocabulary that students have mastered in the junior and senior year.Mastering these vocabularies allows students to read English original monographs fluently,but current college students rarely have this ability.

The vocabulary learning is also divided into three stages.The first stage is to understand the basic meaning of vocabulary.That means you should be able to read,write,and understand the meaning of words.The first stage corresponds to the“recognition”and“understanding”process in Bloom’s taxonomy.The second stage is to master the usage of vocabulary and be able to use vocabulary to make sentences proficiently.This ability corresponds to the“application”and“analysis”stages of Bloom’s taxonomy.The third stage is to master the deep meaning of vocabulary,and be able to habitually use vocabulary flexibly.This ability corresponds to the“comprehensive”stage in Bloom’s taxonomy.

Create a New Teaching Model

The vocabulary recurrence rate will affect the learner’s familiarity with the vocabulary.The higher the frequency of the vocabulary,the better the learner will master the vocabulary.Therefore,many learners recommend paying attention to the vocabulary recurrence rate in the textbook compilation process.Not all words have the same frequency of use.They are two to three thousand high-frequency words in English.But there are tens of thousands of low-frequency words.Because there are a large number of low-frequency vocabulary in English,that is,vocabulary with low frequency and narrow range of use.It is particularly important to master the strategy of vocabulary teaching.Low-frequency vocabulary has several characteristics.First of all,there are a lot of them.Secondly,these vocabulary learners may only encounter them once or twice in their lives,and the hard work they put into them will not be rewarded.The low-frequency vocabulary in a certain language as a whole may appear very often in a very special field.That means their scope of application is very narrow.Therefore,we should master certain strategies when teaching so as not to make unnecessary efforts and yield to get twice the result with half the effort.We should make students put in a lot of effort to remember some high-frequency vocabulary.

The existing teaching process of college English cannot meet the teaching requirements of Bloom’s taxonomy.Teachers need to modify the existing teaching process and model.In the future teaching process,two teaching reforms are needed.

One is the reform of vocabulary memory methods.During the first and second stages of vocabulary teaching,students need to memorize the basic meaning of vocabulary.Students are able to use vocabulary to make sentences proficiently if they master the usage of vocabulary.The process of establishing this kind of knowledge system needs to be able to make students have a relatively deep impression(Gong,2017,pp.154-155).I think the“situational teaching method”can fully meet this requirement.In this process,teachers can construct classroom situations through the combination of blackboard writing and multimedia equipment.Let students have a deep impression on the vocabulary they have learned.

In the classroom,teachers can combine the presentation of vocabulary with pictures,videos,music,etc.Through vivid and colorful ways,teachers can mobilize students' various senses to participate in word memory.Teachers can also pick out representative vocabulary and ask students to connect them to form a short story,and then let the students perform it according to the plot of the story.At any age,games are the best means of language teaching.Teachers in the classroom can make full use of various resources to allow students to participate.In addition,English vocabulary memory is an important part of the English learning process.Students must first master the memorized words in order to study English sentences and even articles successfully.The quality of vocabulary memory will directly affect English learners'further study and use of the language.English vocabulary is very easy to forget because it is not commonly used.Therefore,in English vocabulary teaching,we must pay attention to timely review,and students can be required to use their usual scattered time to review vocabulary,so as to spend a shorter time to obtain greater gains.At the same time,the flexible review in usual teaching is combined with the overall review in unit exercises.Students have to be aware that review is the first time to promptly.They should begin to start in the large-scale forgotten to get a good effect.Pay attention to the form of a new form,more variables,avoiding mechanical repeating monotonous tricks.Teachers always need to keep students’enthusiasm for learning.Teachers also should stimulate students’enthusiasm of the intellectual activity.

The second is to change the classroom status of teachers in college English teaching.In vocabulary teaching,teachers must ensure that the classroom is based on students(Liu,2016,pp.205-207).Teachers must guide students effectively and tap students' interest in learning.In this vocabulary teaching mode,students can affect their content,form,material and progress.In the whole study,students are in the center.Learning environment and learning activities are students-centered and are controlled by the students themselves.Teachers should provide students with independent learning and mutual learning opportunities.They should provide students with effective learning skills guidance.Teachers on classrooms make students be a scholar who can find and solve the problems.Teachers are classists and guiders who design to learn from the overall angle.Students are the main body of the learning process.They are explorers and constructors of the knowledge.Through the guidance of teachers,teachers give full play and mobilize students'research enthusiasm and initiative.

Concluding Remarks

In summary,Bloom’s taxonomy can propose a more reasonable teaching process through the target classification system.The teaching process includes recognition,analysis,and comprehensive application.In college English vocabulary teaching,teachers can classify students' English proficiency into normal,higher and more higher according to Bloom's taxonomy theory which corresponding to relative vocabulary respectively.Teachers need to reform the teaching model,change the status of the classroom and optimize the assessment mechanism to improve students'English proficiency.