A Study On The Effectiveness Of Association Strategy In Senior One English Vocabulary Teaching

Language plays an important role in people’s daily communication, as oneof the three elements (vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar), which languageis made up of, vocabulary has a direct impact on communication. AmericanWriter and educator L.Ron.Hubbar pointed out:―The most important elementinfluencing language comprehension and application is vocabulary.‖Thisfully shows the importance of vocabulary in language application. Andforeign language learning should attach more importance to vocabulary. Tohelp students better understand and master a certain amount of vocabulary, theteacher should not only teach students many new words, but also providestudents some effective vocabulary learning strategies, which will enablestudents to learn vocabulary by themselves.Observing the current English vocabulary teaching, the author findsvocabulary teaching has become the biggest problem influencing the students’English learning and teachers’ English teaching. In order to solve this problem,the author studied others research results. Besides, combining with thecharacteristics of her own teaching practice and the characteristics of highschool students learning style, the author raised the following three questions:1) Can employing Association Strategy arouse students’ interest of vocabularylearning and build their confidence to learn English well?2) Can AssociationStrategy training promote students’ associative learning ability in memorizingnew words?3) With the help of vocabulary association strategy, can studentsimprove their comprehensive English score?Analyzing the problems students have in Senior English learning and allthe learning strategies of English vocabulary, the author carried anexperimental research of association strategy on senior one students’vocabulary learning. The experimental class (class11) and the control class(Class8) are chosen through the "comprehensive English test" among seven classes in Senior one. The two classes are tested by "vocabulary associationquiz A" for pretest, then the experimental class received association strategytraining for16weeks. And after the training, students from the two classesreceived "vocabulary association quiz B" for posttest. Meanwhile, the authorused the SPSS software for data analysis. The experimental class gotremarkably higher scores in posttest than the control class. At the same time,the results of "Senior one students English vocabulary association strategyquestionnaire‖show an increase of vocabulary learning interest inexperimental class. Moreover, students in the experimental class did muchbetter than the control class in the final English exam.Therefore, the author draws the conclusion: Firstly, vocabulary associationstrategy training enabled students not only to take a more positive attitudetowards English learning, but also to have more interest in English vocabularymemorizing. Secondly, vocabulary association strategy training can improvethe students’ English vocabulary associative ability. Thirdly, vocabularyassociation strategy can indirectly help students improve their comprehensiveEnglish score.