An Empirical Study On English Vocabulary Association Strategy Of Senior One

As one of the three most important elements of language, vocabulary plays a key role in language learning. Research into vocabulary learning has become a focus of much research in recent years. Various researches around the world have made great contributions to the study of vocabulary learning strategies. However, most of the previous studies were conducted among college students. Few researches have been done among Middle School students. This paper, after reviewing the research situations of vocabulary learning strategies in China and abroad, focusing on the vocabulary learning strategies employed by Senior One students in China, aims to testify the effectiveness of Association Strategy Training in Senior One. Based on such a background, the paper is supposed to answer the following questions:1) The employment of Association Strategies by Senior One:Which Association Strategies are popular with Senior One students? How many of them know about Association Strategies and how many of them use the strategies in their daily English vocabulary learning?2) Do Senior One students like Association Strategy Trainings? Are these trainings effective or not in improving their vocabulary learning efficiency or their interests in English vocabulary learning?The investigation about vocabulary learning concept of Senior One students shows that most of the students are not so interested in English vocabulary learning, and they come across a lot of difficulties in the learning and that a large number of students hope their teachers teach some vocabulary learning methods in English class.After finding out these problems and reviewing the research backgrounds, the author intended to testy out the effectiveness of vocabulary learning strategy training in Senior One through experimentation. The experimental class (class1) and control class (class3) are picked out from five Senior One classes through Integrated English test paper. And the two classes are pretested by English Vocabulary Test A for Senior One. Then the students in experimental class are trained according to Association Strategy Training Material for Senior One. The training lasted for almost one semester. After the training finished, the students in both two classes were tested by English Vocabulary Test B for Senior One. The results showed that the students in experimental class got better scores than those in control class in vocabulary test. Meanwhile, the results of Association Strategy Questionnaire for Senior One tell that more students became interested in English vocabulary learning. Therefore, the author concluded that firstly, Association Strategies are scientific and effective for Senior One students; secondly, Association Strategy Training improved students’ability of English vocabulary learning and ability of memorizing words; thirdly, Association Strategy Training helps students to form the consciousness of using vocabulary learning strategies. And under the influence of Association Strategy Training, students have much more positive attitudes towards English vocabulary learning and more interests in memorizing English words.There are totally five chapters in the paper:Chapter One IntroductionThis chapter is a brief introduction including the importance of vocabulary, the importance of vocabulary learning strategies and the current situation of vocabulary strategy teaching and learning in Senior Middle School in China.Chapter Two Literature ReviewIt tells background of the research which mainly contains definition of vocabulary learning strategies, researches about vocabulary learning strategies in China and abroad; definitions and classifications of Association Strategy, research situation about Association Strategy in China and abroad.Chapter Three Research MethodologyThis chapter mainly describes the research questions, subjects, instruments, design and procedures of the experiment.Chapter Four Results and AnalysisThe results of the experiment are presented and analysis about the statistics is conducted by using SPSS.Chapter Five ConclusionIt concludes the whole passage, gives some suggestions about current Senior English vocabulary teaching and points out the limitations of this study.