The Effect Of "Write To Learn" On Senior High School Students Vocabulary Acquisition

In the1980s, Krashen proposed Input Hypothesis. Attracted by Input Hypothesis, the role and importance of output was neglected in foreign language teaching. Output Hypothesis was proposed by the Canadian linguist Swain in 1985. In her research based on learning second language in immersion classes, Swain concluded that comprehensible input is not the sole factor for successful second language learning, arguing that output serves an indispensable learning purpose. However, few experimental studies testify the effect of output on vocabulary acquisition.This thesis covered an experimental study on the application of"Write to Learn"which based on Output Hypothesis in senior high school English vocabulary acquisition. 60 senior high school students from a middle school in Nanchang of Jiangxi Province participated in the experiment of"Write to Learn". These students were divided into two groups: Experimental Group and Control Group. The experiment lasted for 9 weeks, at the beginning of the experiment and at the end of the experiment, the two groups students were required to write compositions on the same topic in class. From the 1st week, each student of the two groups was required to write a journal each week, and lasted for 8 weeks. The students of Experimental Group were required to write journals with newly-learned words and as much as they could, while the students of Control Group weren't required any special request. A pre-test and a post-test focusing on writing journals with newly-learned words were to find whether the"Write to Learn"method improved the learners'English vocabulary acquisition. Results showed that the learners, by using the newly-learned words to write journals, could retain more words in their memory and could also put them into use automatically and appropriately in the same context.This study is of certain theoretical and practical significance. Firstly, the research proposes the function of"Write to Learn"which based on output in English vocabulary acquisition. Secondly, it is confirmed in this study that language use and production is an essential part of language learning, and that one can retain more words in his memory by using the newly-learned words to write journals. Acquiring vocabulary through writing journals is more effective than just listening to the teacher's explanation and doing vocabulary exercises. It is helpful for teachers'teaching and learners'learning, shifting from teacher-centered to learner-centered teaching model; and it opens a field for more researches regarding foreign language teaching and learning, it also points out the disadvantages of the current examination system.There are five chapters in this thesis. The opening chapter generally introduces some background information about the studies concerning senior high school English vocabulary acquisition, and presents a rough picture of this study as well as the need for such a study. This introduction chapter is followed by the literature review, in which some key terms mentioned in this thesis are defined: Output Hypothesis,"Write to Learn", journals writing and vocabulary acquisition, and main research and findings abroad and at home are introduced. Chapter 3 is the methodology chapter, details about the design of the experiment carried out in this study are listed in this chapter, including the specific research questions, subjects, instruments and experiment procedures. Chapter 4 is the results and discussion, with a nine-week experiment, the answers to each of the research questions in the study and the conclusion drawn from the results are reported in this chapter. The conclusion chapter includes major findings, implications of the findings, limitations of the study and suggestions for the future research. Due to the time length and confines of experimental conditions, this study has some limitations, such as, the relative simplicity of the test form, the limited research capacity of the writer, and so on.