Semantic Network for Vocabulary Teaching

Abstract

字（詞）彙的教學目的，乃是希望學生能學會如何學習字（詞）的技巧，而成為獨立的學習者，並且能夠進一步對字（詞）彙產生興趣。但是，在Nagy及Herman（1984及1987）的研究中，並沒有清楚地指出學生應該學會什麼樣的技巧、也沒有提到學生必須對哪方面的字（詞）彙知識加深學習。本篇報告所提出的論點就是，在學生學習的文章中，有相當豐富的字（詞）彙知識，學生應利用學習字義時，建立由字義組成的語意網路。就字（詞）彙的知識而言，一位有經驗的讀者能夠根據前後文推斷出生字的字義，而且能夠儘快將生字與熟悉的字（詞）做語意上的連結，好讓生字由生疏成為熟悉。因此，字（詞）彙的教學除了要學生學會字義之外，也當加強如何建立語意網路的經驗。

Vocabulary instruction concentrates on teaching strategies which students will eventually become independent readers and interested in words (Nagy and Herman, 1984 and 1987). It is, however, unclear what learning strategies that students should learn and which aspect of word knowledge that students should explore. This paper proposes that text for vocabulary learning provide context from which students can judge the definitions of the new words, and that they explore semantic fields of new words. An independent reader has many skills two of which are to learn definitions of new words with contextual information (Jenkins and Dixon, 1983; Stahl, 1985 and 1986) and to establish relationships between. new words and familiar ones (Irvin. 1990; Maiguashca, 1984: Martin, 1984; Ramsey, 1981; Trimino, 1993; Weatherford, 1990). When learning new words with the two mentioned skills in mind, students not only concentrate on learning word meanings but also focus on strategies for exploring word relationships