The Effects Of Graded Readers On Senior High School Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition:An Empirical Study

This thesis conducts an empirical study on the impacts of graded readers on high school students’ vocabulary acquisition. Now most of the studies at home and abroad are on the graded reader itself. But it is rare of researching the impact of graded readers on high school students’ vocabulary acquisition. Based on the theory of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Affective Filter Hypothesis, this study is committed to investigate the impact of graded readers on high school students’ vocabulary acquisition. It aims to answer the following three questions:(1) what is the impact of graded readers on high school students’ vocabulary learning interest?(2) What is the impact of graded readers on high school students’ vocabulary size?(3) What is the impact of graded readers on high school students’ vocabulary depth? Depending on the studies of former researchers and according to the statistic of pre-test of students’ vocabulary size, the author chose 34 students from one class in Dinghai District High School and recommended three books from 4th grade of Bookworms. Students read the books for about 15 minutes everyday. The duration of the study is 13 weeks. The statistic was analyzed with the help of SPSS.After the 13-week-long experiment, the statistics shows that:(1) students are more willing to learn vocabulary, learn through communicating with teachers and plan and carry out for vocabulary learning after class;(2) From 2600 to 3533, the mean of their vocabulary size has increased and it shows that graded readers are good for students to enlarge the vocabulary size of High School students.(3) The vocabulary depth of students has been improved. According to the data collected from the vocabulary depth tests and analyzed by the SPSS, the mean score in the pre-vocabulary depth test is 55.588 and it’s 69.485 in the post one, which shows that the vocabulary depth has been raised by reading the graded readers.Considering the sample size and the duration, we still have a lot to improve in the future. For example, the number of sample is not large enough, the duration is not long enough and the interruption of in-class-learning is disturbing. However, the study suggests that the graded readers are useful for the interest of students’ vocabulary learning, and also gives pedagogy for teachers to teach vocabulary for improving the vocabulary size and the depth.