Starting the 2005 academic year, the Ministry of Education will adopt a new English curriculum for senior-high school students -- who are required then to be equipped with at least 7,000 vocabulary entries plus the ability to listen, speak, read and write to an acceptable degree before graduation. Then what? Will this measure guarantee or increase competitiveness of these quasi-undergraduates?
Today, students on average are getting slightly better at listening and speaking while ostensibly weaker in comprehending passages. What is frustrating is that many of them cannot even make up a complete sentence. The meaning of all this seems profound and leaves much room for discussion, but the equation that "the inability to read and write" is synonymous with "illiteracy" has been bandied about, despite the fact that English education at middle and high schools in Taiwan has achieved great success in upgrading students' vocal and aural skills.
Will a vocabulary buildup necessarily prove enough to help turn a high-school student into a college student or worker literate enough to put the words he/she learned into practice and make them logically understandable, whether spoken or written? According to my teacher Darrel Doty, "It seems easier to express yourself by using complex words, but how well you master a language depends on whether you can apply easy words you've learned to complex thinking."
"Make your writing as readable as possible," said another English professor of mine, "Simple words and simple sentences are quite desirable." In a sense, an extensive vocabulary appears to have mistakenly become a touchstone by which one's English proficiency is judged and assessed.
When local students, especially older ones, start to learn Eng-lish, they must find it extremely difficult to think in the language. This is a crucial problem that may decide the way one will be dealing with the language, and it is also a difficulty supposed to be overcome first. Make a great effort to get used to English syntax and feel comfortable with the use of it; otherwise the more words one memorizes, the more frustrated one will become.
It is undeniable that one cannot easily express oneself if your vocabulary is limited. However, the point is that even if one's vocabulary is large or amounts to more than requested, how dexterous is one in using it? Or even though one has a small vocabulary, does one care for making the best of it? What's more, does one read often?
Experienced English learners may question these statements and say: "How will one be able to read without the required or basic vocabulary entries?" Well, the same question could be asked this way: "Although one has mastered a large amount of words, does that assure one's ability to read?" A lazy high-school student who is doomed to failure is very likely to consider the new threshold set by the ministry -- 7,000 vocabulary entries memorized -- a "mission impossible" because he/she doesn't bother to read. If one rarely reads, how possible is it that one's word bank will be enriched with a better vocabu-lary? If a person's vocabulary is limited, how can he/she feel motivated to read? Diligent students, however, are believed to read regularly; thus acquiring 7,000 words is probably a piece of cake for them.
It is obvious that how much one has read and understood serves as an indispensable factor underpinning one's interest in learning English. It should be the reading-oriented programs that matter most, serving as evaluation of a student being qualified or competitive enough to graduate from high school, not the number of words acquired, per se.
Chang Chi-yu is an associate professor in the department of applied English at Ming Chuan University.
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