An Empirical Study Of English Vocabulary Memory Strategies For Unicersity Students

In recent years, with the booming of the research on language learning strategy, vocabulary memory strategy attracts much attention. In the process of learning vocabulary, the effectiveness of memorizing words is the most important. Thus, as a means of acquiring English words effectively, vocabulary memory strategies play an extremely important role in vocabulary learning, and research on it has practical significance. However, literature review and research reveal that the relevant research on vocabulary memory is not much enough and vocabulary memory is a main problem college students confront with. From this general phenomenon, the researcher tries to excavate the intrinsic reasons, establish assumption and apply coping strategies to verify through actual teaching in the present study, and ultimately arriving at a more objective conclusion. Meanwhile, some useful suggestions and adoptive strategies are put forward. Based on the view that strategies are helpful to improve the learning effect, the research with the non-English majors in Northwest A&F University---a university located in the underdeveloped northwest region of China as the subjects, to train them to use vocabulary memory strategies, aims to explore the effect of vocabulary memory strategy training and the usage of the strategies. The content of the research mainly includes investigating the influence of vocabulary memory strategy training on non-English majors'vocabulary proficiency, finding out the relationship between the amount of memory strategies and the vocabulary capacity and discovering the effective vocabulary memory strategies for non-English majors. Based on the results of these contents, the researcher explores the necessity and feasibility of vocabulary memory strategies in the process of English vocabulary teaching and learning, hoping to provide some useful information to Chinese English learners.The researcher adopts both quantitative and qualitative methods---teaching experiment and interview. 170 non-English majors are chosen by cluster and random sampling as its subjects. Based on the theories of Information Processing Model of Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) and the Level of Processing Approach of Craik and Lockhart(1972), combining with classifications of vocabulary memory strategies from scholars at home and abroad, the researcher chooses eight strategies attached to shallow-encoding mnemonics and deep-encoding mnemonics to train the subjects. The training effect is examined through vocabulary proficiency test. The collected data is computed and analyzed by SPSS 18.0. The results are as follows: in vocabulary proficiency post-test, mean score of the subjects in the Experimental Classes is much higher than that in the Control Class; mean score of the subjects in the Experimental Class 1 is much higher than that in the Experimental Class 2; the subjects in the two Experimental Classes all like to use word formation strategy, association memory strategy and image graft strategy, and the subjects in the Experimental Class 1 like using rolling memory strategy and letter replacement memory strategy too. Therefore, the following conclusions are drawn. Vocabulary memory strategy training is very useful, which can greatly improve non-English majors'vocabulary proficiency. It is better to use more strategies than less ones; more English vocabulary memory strategies the subjects master, bigger vocabulary capacity they will expand. In addition, the results of the interview reflect vocabulary memory strategy training could improve the subjects'interest and ideas in vocabulary learning.These findings may provide useful inspiration and suggestions on vocabulary memory strategy training in college English teaching. Firstly, vocabulary memory strategy can help the subjects to memorize words efficiently and to avoid wasting much time and energy, so vocabulary memory strategy training is essential. Secondly, it will get much better effect by using different types of vocabulary memory strategies to memorize words, so that careful introduction and training on various strategies is necessary. Thirdly, subjects in different levels use different strategies and the same strategy may not suit all the subjects, thus different strategies should be applied to the subjects according to individual differences.