The purpose of the study is to find out whether the presentation of synonymous expressions in the English text-books of the SMU students are in accordance with learning strategies proposed by Carter and McCarthy (1988) and Nation's (2001) guiding principles. This is done by analyzing potential synonymous expressions found in the Window on the World series, the English textbooks for SMU students. These books are based on the 1994 Curriculum, the 1999 revised GBPP by the National Team of Instructors of the English Language.
In analyzing the notion of synonymy the writer chooses the classification by Cruse (2000) namely absolute synonymy, propositional synonymy, and near-synonym, and in analyzing synonyms the writer makes use of several dictionaries as instruments for the analysis. In addition, the presentation of the synonymous expressions found in the Window on the World series are analyzed by using Carter and McCarthy (1988) and Nation (2001) as the parametric references.
A number of researches, including Carter and McCarthy, believe that comprehension should precede production. Carter and McCarthy mention some techniques to enhance understanding, such as 'context clues' and 'word morphology'. To enhance production, some techniques such as 'situational sets', 'semantic sets' and 'collocations' are useful.
According to Nation, psychological conditions are important in learning vocabulary. The three general processes which relate to psychological conditions are noticing, retrieval and creative (generative) use. Besides the three general processes, Nation also puts forward the principles of vocabulary teaching: (1) content and sequencing, (2) format and presentation and (3) monitoring and assessment.
The result of this analysis is presented in chapter IV of this thesis. From the analysis, it can be concluded that the writers of the Window on the World series have mostly adopted Carter and McCarthy (1988) and Nation (2001) principles in vocabulary teaching.
Considering the above mentioned results of analysis, these textbooks are of benefit to SMU students to encourage them in studying English as well as to teachers to provide them with input in teaching English as a foreign language. |