The Impact Of Vocabulary Strategy Training On Children’s Vocabulary Acquisition

Learning strategies have been widely researched in the west.While considering the impacts of social background and education on the learning strategy selection, the research results by foreign scholars should not directly introduced to and implemented for Chinese students. Though Chinese scholars in this field started to explore the localized learning strategies, they have mainly concentrated on adult learners in the metropolis. Up to now, few researches have focused on the English vocabulary learning strategies or the effect of them for the primary school students in remote cities. Therefore, the children’s vocabulary learning strategies in terms of the necessity, effect and training model need to be investigated for their applications to the students from those areas.This study aims is to investigate the application of English vocabulary learning strategies to the students in Shuo Zhou Secondary Primary School.With the theoretical support from Schmitt’s classification and Cohen’s strategy training model, the author analyzes differences of test score and strategy usage between before and after training based on young learners’cognitive characteristics and psychological development, so as to explore the suitable strategy training model for the primary school English teaching.The two natural classes of grade6th were randomly selected as the experimental class and the control class for the survey of vocabulary learning strategy training. The five-week long training included five strategies categorizes mentioned in Schmitt’s taxonomy. The experiment has been conducted using the instruments of tests scores, questionnaires, and interviews.And the results have indicated below:1. Primary school students tend to use vocabulary learning strategies widely.2. The vocabulary learning strategy training improves the subjects’ vocabulary acquisition.3. Students employ the strategies in the learning process with a higher frequency after the training. They also get strategies involved in deeper level of processing.The research has proposed the following implications:First, the whole training process should be organized from a learner-centered perspective; Second, all the strategies should be selected with regard to the learner’s needs, styles, and goal; Third, the strategy training should well integrate into daily English teaching and be organized in accordance with the textbook.In addition, the teacher needs to encourage students to apply multiple strategies at a time.