Vocabulary Book Development for Chinese Students: Learning Vocabulary from Listening

Abstract

This study attempts to explain the general idea of the creation of a vocabulary book and its further application. Before developing this material a pilot survey was designed to investigate any obstructions that the participants may have encountered memorizing vocabulary during the course. The results show that the majority of the participants often failed to formulate the word forms of English vocabulary and this failure led to the insufficient memorization of English words. In light of this discovery the current research commenced. The first step was to look at causes. Through reading the previous literature and combined with the researcher’s experience of learning English and Japanese, four causes were inferred. Meanwhile a listening-based illustrated English vocabulary sample book was developed to verify the assumption that after taking a listening-based pedagogical class, the ability to recognize English vocabulary will be enhanced (will be an issue to be addressed in the future). Also, interviews were conducted with ten Chinese EFL students with respect to their performance on the items of this vocabulary book and their opinion of the sample book.