Play with Words——Palindrome: a Method to Make English Vocabulary-learning Interesting

Abstract

It is commonly believed that one of the unpopular English courses is vocabulary course, because the content is boring, the classroom atmosphere is dull and the students’ enthusiasm is low. Moreover some people think that English vocabulary course is unnecessary and it should only be learned by students themselves. Worse still, some teachers just give up the teaching of vocabulary for they think vocabulary lesson is to recite words and that is the students’ business.

But in fact, it is not right, for teacher’s guidance in students’ learning is crucial, and the teaching of vocabulary is important for students’ language competence. English vocabulary learning belongs to the category of basic knowledge, and the basic knowledge of students is a necessary condition and foundation for practical use of English, no matter for oral English competence or English writing and reading ability. It is the responsibility of teachers to think such a question why students have little enthusiasm and weak interest in vocabulary course, and why the classroom atmosphere is dull instead of active and interactive. It is the task of teachers to design a vocabulary course with interesting content and interactive parts to make the lesson vivid and to improve the students’ enthusiasm and interest.

Actually, in English vocabulary there are many interesting and meaningful phenomena, such as Spoonerisms, Tongue Twister Fun, oxymoron, Malapropisms, Palindrome, Redundancies, Ambiguities, "Net Lingua" – The Language of the Internet, Etymology: Word Origins, and Pangrams Section, etc., which leave a “space” for language-leaners to find out secret and surprise, and to actively explore and discover something different instead of negatively reciting words. They make the boring vocabulary lesson changed into the interesting and interactive practical course, which is one of the sources of interest for students.

The author in this paper intends to give a brief introduction to one of these interesting linguistic phenomena, Palindrome, including definition, origin and function etc., for teachers to use for reference to make their course more vivid and effective.