An Empirical Study On The Vocabulary Memory Strategies In Junior Middle Schools

Vocabulary is acknowledged as the carrier of phonetics and grammar,which is linked closely with the language we are learning.It is widely accepted that without vocabulary,any language can’t be well organized and easily manipulated.As a result,vocabulary,incontrovertibly speaking,plays an indispensable role in cultivating language comprehensive and communicative application capacities.Although great importance has been attached to vocabulary teaching in the process of the foreign language teaching since 1970 s,students in junior middle schools,nowadays are put in a dilemma of vocabulary retention due to the traditional vocabulary teaching and the massive vocabulary input.Therefore,it is of great significance to explore the effective vocabulary memory strategies to replace the traditional vocabulary memory methods.Nevertheless,based on the previous studies,most of the researches touched upon the general descriptive analysis about the vocabulary memory strategies among senior students,while the number of the empirical researches on the application of vocabulary memory strategies among junior middle school students is quite limited.In accordance with the situation mentioned above,this study aims to adopt and combine quantitative and qualitative methods to conduct the research.76 students are chosen as the research participants who come from two parallel classes in Grade Nine in Wenhai Middle School in Hangzhou.In the study,the utilization of vocabulary memory strategies and the problems the students meet when learning vocabulary are analyzed and discussed in detail.Based on the classification of memory strategies proposed by Schmitt(1997),a questionnaire with 12 memory strategies is designed to investigate the application of memory strategies.According to the investigation results collected from the two parallel classes,four strategies,less frequently applied but more effective,have been selected to teach theparticipants in experimental class for three months.The study attempts to answer three questions as follows:1.What’s the current situation of the application of vocabulary memory strategies in junior middle schools?2.Can vocabulary memory strategy improve students’ vocabulary memorizing ability?3.How does the experiment influence the students’ application of vocabulary strategies?In this study,the questionnaire about vocabulary memory strategies and vocabulary proficiency tests are involved.Data collected from the questionnaire and the vocabulary tests are analyzed with SPSS 16.0.The procedures consist of both descriptive analysis,independent samples T test and paired samples T test.The major findings of the study are presented as follows:First,the students have a little awareness to apply different vocabulary memory strategies to consolidate the vocabulary memorization.However,the current situation of vocabulary memory strategies is far from satisfaction.Most students still memorize vocabulary by rote mechanically and some effective strategies are used in a low frequency.Secondly,the vocabulary memory strategy can improve the vocabulary memorization,for the students in experimental class do better in the vocabulary proficiency test than those in control class after the experiment.Thirdly,the students in experimental class start to apply some more effective strategies to help vocabulary memorization instead of the traditional ones like rote and repetition.All these findings indicate that it is necessary for teachers and educators to teach the students how to memorize the vocabulary,and it is also indispensable for students to master the vocabulary memory strategies to grasp more words and ease their learning pressure of English.