内田 奈緒
Reconsidering English Vocabulary Instruction from a Psychological Perspective:
Investigation of English Teachers’ Instruction and Suggestion of a Practice
Nao Uchida
April, 2021
Abstract
This research focused on English vocabulary instruction from the perspective of psychology. The aim was to clarify issues in English teachers’ current vocabulary instruction and obtain suggestions for more effective instruction for students to promote effective vocabulary learning. Study1 conducted an interview on teachers’ vocabulary instruction, strategy knowledge, recognition of the cause of students’ difficulty and beliefs. The current results showed that few teachers explicitly instruct strategies with deep processing, while most teachers taught strategy implicitly, but not explicitly. Explicit strategy instruction was suggested to be hindered by belief issues and failure to recognize students’ difficulty at a cognitively deeper level. Study2 conducted explicit strategy instruction and subsequent implicit instruction in regular lessons and investigated the change in student strategy use. As a result, there was a continued increase in students’ use of deeper strategies, and this change was prompted by awareness of difficulty in vocabulary learning and recognition of the effectiveness of strategies to address them. Finally, based on the two studies, the current issues and some suggestions for instruction to cultivate students’ skills to learn effectively by themselves were discussed.
