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Vocabulary acquisition and assessment are regarded as the key basis for
the instruction of English as a second language. However, it is
time-consuming, fallible and repetitive for the school teachers and parents
to assess the proficiency of the students' vocabulary acquisition. We
customized the open source course management system Moodle to build the
individualized vocabulary review and assessment functions for English
instruction. This web-based system was integrated into the regular English
instruction of an experiment class of Grade three in a junior middle
school, i.e. it was used in one school hour almost every week for an entire
school term. Within this blended learning environment, the students'
performance of the experiment class in the ordinary and especially
vocabulary examinations throughout the school term was improved gradually
and was better than that of the control class, so that it achieved number
one among sixteen classes in the same grade at the final term examination,
compared with number eight before this experiment. The survey and interview
with the students also demonstrated the system's valuable functions for
vocabulary acquisition and listening comprehension, and showed the
students' favor to such a kind of syllabus design with the intelligent
course management system. The implication of this research is that the
blended learning of English class with the individualized vocabulary
acquisition and assessment system can improve the students' performance in
vocabulary acquisition and in ordinary test. This system can also be
applied in other English classes.
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