Abstract：It is universally agreed that English has been the dominant foreign language in China. Accordingly, some new English teaching theories are being put into effect in China. However, many students can’t study English efficiently that they can’t acquire a comparatively strong competence. A lot of students who have studied English for at least six years still find it very hard to communicate with foreigners even in simple words. This common phenomenon involves many factors; but vocabulary teaching is a most crucial aspect. The ignorance of vocabulary teaching greatly undermines the effectiveness of foreign language teaching, and further weakens the learners’ communicative competence. While vocabulary is very important in communication and it is also the most difficult aspect in their English study. According to the traditional linguistic theory, language usually includes three basic parts: pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, but only vocabulary is more changeable. Actually, a learner’s amount of vocabulary reflects the level of language competence. Unfortunately, a lot of teachers in China have spent more time in vocabulary teaching, but they haven’t got any ideal result. In view of this, based on an explanation of the relationship between vocabulary and English level, this essay is designed to analyze the existing problems and tries to propose some constructive suggestions on how to handle vocabulary teaching in senior high schools so that the quality of vocabulary teaching in Chin’s foreign language classes can be improved. 

Key Words: vocabulary teaching in senior high school; improved; communicative competence

中文摘要：众所周知，英语已经在中国占据外语的主导地位，中国也采用了一些新的英语教学理论。然而，许多学生不能有效率地学习，以至达不到较强的英语能力。高中毕业生仍然感觉与外国人交流很困难，导致这种现象的关键是词汇教学。忽视词汇教学在很大程度上降低了外语教学的效率和学生的交流能力。词汇在交流中起着很重要的作用，它也是英语学习最难的攻破点。根据传统的语言学理论，语言包括三个基本的部分——发音，词汇和语法，只有词汇是比较多变的。学生词汇量的大小可以反映出其外语水平，然而许多老师在英语教学中花了很多的时间，却没有得到理想的效果。基于词汇和英语水平之间关系的解释，本文旨在分析存在问题，并尝试提出关于如何操作高中英语词汇教学的一些建设性的建议，从而使英语词汇教学质量得到改善。

关键词：高中英语词汇教学，改善，交流能力