| The phenomenon of "much time but low efficiency" first occurs at the beginning stage of English learning. Theoretical study has paid less attention to the different stages of English learning, especially the status quo at the beginning stage and its Chinese characteristics. At this stage, teachers lack an effective approach in ... word-memorizing teaching and ignored the teaching and training of students' word-memorizing skills so that they failed to master the necessary words to continue their learning. The results of this study's questionnaire show that the majority of the students can only remember few or very few words, fear English test, dislike English and have no confidence in learning it well. Consequently, most students' English learning died young.This study dissected the main current methods of word-memorizing, pointed out the infeasibility or unitariness of their theories and advanced a new word-memorizing approach based on a combination of several theories in linguistics and cognitive psychology and a comprehensive application of several memorizing methods. By analysing the reasons of the failure in every link in the word-memorizing process shown in the questionnaire, this new approach was testified theoretically scientific. The term-long experiment further proved the scientificness and feasibility of this approach.The subjects of the questionnaire of this study were 520 Grade 2 students (273 boys, 246 girls) of 12 classes from 6 ordinary junior middle schools in Guiyang proper. The experiment was conducted in Changsha Wangyue Junior Middle School. As the control class, Class 104 was taught with communicative approach. As the experimental class, Class 103 was first taught with 20 class hours' "word-memorizing approach" material compiled by the author myself, then taught with communicative approach, using the same textbook as the control class did. But in each unit, words were learned before communicative approach was used.By combining qualitative and quantitative methods, this study analysed the word-memorizing approach. Through the experiment, we found that the experimental class achieved notable results.1. Most students approached words by reading their sounds, demarcating their syllables and imagining scenes or pictures related to their meanings, etc. rather than memorizing mechanically by copying or reading their letters; 2. Quite a few students could learn the words before class; 3. The amount of words was evidently larger than that of the control class.This study might be of some benefit to the changing of the phenomenon that most students at the beginning stage of English learning can only remember few or very few words. It might also have the following enlightenments. 1. The knowledge and skills of linguistics and psychology should be applied to guiding the practice of language teaching, especially at the beginning stage instead of being bundled up and placed on the top shelf. 2. We should be bold enough to apply multiple theories and methods comprehensively. 3. Researchers are expected to do more experimental studies. |
