A Study On The Effectiveness Of Thematic Clustering Presentation Mode On Junior Middle School Students’ English Vocabulary Reviewing

Vocabulary,as a basic element of language,plays a crucial role in English language learning.Vocabulary presentation is an important step in vocabulary teaching,and a reasonable way of vocabulary presentation can help teachers and students improve teaching effects and learning efficiency.Therefore,it is of great significance to explore effective ways of vocabulary presentation.Vocabulary is not isolated and unrelated,but can be presented in clusters.Among different ways,thematic clustering presentation mode increasingly attracts scholars’ attention in recent years.Based on Schema Theory,Information Processing Theory and Semantic Field Theory,this study applies topic clustering presentation to English vocabulary reviewing lessons of junior middle school,and tries to answer the following research questions:(1)What is the effect of thematic clustering vocabulary review on middle school students’ English vocabulary knowledge acquisition?(2)What is the influence of thematic clustering vocabulary review on middle school students’ vocabulary learning strategies?This study took two parallel classes of Grade 7 in a junior middle school as the research participants,and carried out thematic clustering vocabulary review in the experimental class(EC)and traditional vocabulary review based on textbook word-list presentation in the control class(CC).This research adopted a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods.The pre-test is an English language proficiency test to ensure that the English level and vocabulary ability of two selected classes are similar.The immediate test and the delayed test are vocabulary knowledge tests.Students’ vocabulary knowledge acquisition in different periods of time is investigated from the four dimensions of form and meaning,grammatical function,syntagmatic collocation and paradigmatic association.Vocabulary learning strategy questionnaire and interview were also conducted in the experimental class.The data collected from the experiment were statistically analyzed by SPSS 19.0.By comparing the test results of EC and CC,as well as the differences of vocabulary performance in EC before and after the experiment,this study has reached the following results.(1)The delayed effect of thematic clustering vocabulary review is more significant than the immediate effect,which is conducive to students’ vocabulary knowledge acquisition,especially in terms of form and meaning,syntagmatic collocation and paradigmatic association.That is to say,thematic clustering vocabulary review can effectively maintain students’ vocabulary retention.(2)Thematic clustering vocabulary review is helpful to develop students’ vocabulary learning strategies,especially memory strategies and metacognitive strategies.Based on the above conclusions,teachers can try to use thematic clustering presentation mode in daily vocabulary teaching and reviewing by guiding students to find the connections between vocabulary,sorting out related words,and building thematic clustering vocabulary network,so as to promote students’ acquisition and maintenance of vocabulary knowledge and cultivate their vocabulary learning strategies and habits.