Journal Review: English Vocabulary Teaching Techniques at Junior Middle Schools

Source: https://medium.com/@drewdennis

Journal Review

Reviewer: Widya Anatasyah

A journal by Xiaomei Yu titled “English Vocabulary Teaching Techniques at Junior Middle Schools” attempts to explain about teaching techniques that is often used by teacher. The author divided into four main points which all of the explanations are based on relevant studies and also interviewed results of 16 English teachers from different junior middle schools by chatting on the internet. This journal published on October 14, 2020 in a part of Canadian Center of Science and Education as English Language Teaching Journal, Volume 13, No. 11, Page 12-14.

According to (McCarten, 2007: 20) in the actual fact, he said without grammar very little can be conveyed, yet without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. From the quotes, means that more emphasis should be placed on vocabulary, and effective vocabulary teaching techniques should be researched in order to best assist learners in acquiring, storing, and retrieving words in the target language. However, the issue is foreign or second language teachers are more likely to focus on grammar than vocabulary.

Therefore, Xiaomei Yu described her review’s result in the difference among classical vocabulary teaching techniques and new vocabulary teaching techniques. The first one is classical teaching happened between 1970s and 1980s which is with textbooks, students were taught to recognize clues in context, use monolingual dictionaries, through synonyms, and infer word meaning from context. And of course, the author found there are some disadvantages to using implicit vocabulary instruction.

The second is new teaching techniques that provide students establish links between words with such of semantic mapping (brainstorming associations of a word and diagramming the results), ordering (arranging a list of words in a specific order), and pictorial schemata (creating grids or diagrams). Those are all based on Sokmen in 1997. In addition, the author is also quoting the research from Balci & Cakir in 2012. They described if teaching with collocations can improve learning and retention of new vocabulary items.

Next, the author of this journal also gives four current trend and recommended techniques for English vocabulary teaching.

1.   Techniques of teaching pronunciation

2.   Techniques of teaching morphology

3.   Techniques of teaching meanings

4.   Techniques of teaching usage

As a recommendation, Xiaomei Yu conveyed that teachers should be clear about their students’ English proficiency as well as the goal of teaching in order to choose effective English vocabulary teaching techniques. The best vocabulary teaching techniques is one that is suitable for the students while also achieving the teaching goal.

The advantage of this journal is very clear explanation and to the point for what the author want to convey. Also, it just contains three pages which is the contents of the journal were made compact and readable even for laymen who is not into academic area.

Nevertheless, it has drawbacks and I cannot close my eyes on either. The research has no practice result about how the techniques would be if we apply it to student? How is student response if we apply to amount of those techniques? Which one that really effective or which one that should apply first to student in the junior middle school? There is no further explanation about it.

Reference:

Yu, Xiaomei. (2020). English Vocabulary Teaching Techniques at Junior Middle Schools. Canadian Center of Science and Education, 13(11).

Name: Widya Anatasyah

Class: 4E

NPM: 1910631060204

Subject: Critical Reading