A contrastive analysis of vocabulary teaching Australian and Chinese university settings

Vocabulary learning is an aspect of language learning. However, in language classrooms vocabulary teaching can be practiced in different ways in different contexts. This paper first describes and compares vocabulary teaching at BUAA (the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics) and CUT (Curtin University of Technology) in Australia and then examines the causes of the methodological differences found in vocabulary teaching in these two educational institutions. In these two universities, methodological differences exist in vocabulary teaching at the levels of both formal instruction and classroom interaction. In the formal instruction of vocabulary teaching, these two universities exhibit different characteristics at the presentation, repetition and exploitation stages. The contrast between foreign and second language teaching, the cultural and educational contexts in which the target language is taught, the way in which the learners’ first language is learned, the linguistic distance between the learner’s native and target languages, and learner and teacher characteristics cause to a greater or lesser extent the methodological differences observed in vocabulary teaching in the two universities in question.