A Study On The Effectiveness Of Multimodal Vocabulary Learning App On English Vocabulary Learning Of Secondary Vocational School Students

In recent years,the development of mobile communication technology and the popularity of mobile terminal devices have promoted the application of mobile learning at all levels of English education.Considering mobile vocabulary learning,most existing studies have primarily focused on subjects at the university level,and few have investigated secondary vocational students.Against this background,the present study explores the effectiveness of a multimodal vocabulary learning APP in vocabulary learning for secondary vocational school students.The study aims to answer the following questions based on multimodal teaching and Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve Theory:(1)Whether the application of multimodal vocabulary learning software can improve vocabulary learning in secondary vocational schools compared to traditional vocabulary teaching? If so,what aspects of vocabulary learning does it improve ?(2)What are secondary vocational students’ perceptions of multimodal vocabulary learning software?The research subjects were selected from 150 students in Grade 1 of electronics at a secondary vocational school in Yongzhou,Hunan Province,in which Experimental Class 1adopted pure audio learning materials in a vocabulary learning software to learn vocabulary;Experimental Class 2 adopted a combination of audio and video materials;the Control class adopted the traditional classroom teaching method to learn vocabulary.Vocabulary pre-tests and immediate,delayed post-tests were conducted for the three classes,and questionnaires and personal interviews were also used to investigate English learners’ attitudes towards the multimodal vocabulary learning software at the end of the experiment.The experimental data are processed using SPSS.The immediate post-test indicated that Experimental Class 2 scored significantly higher than the Control Class and Experimental Class 1 in dictation,Chinese to English translation,and total test score.The delayed post-test indicated that this effect persisted,again with Experimental Class 2 significantly outperforming the control and Experimental Class 1 in Chinese to English translation and total test scores.However,there was no significant difference in dictation scores.The principal findings of this study are:(1)Compared to traditional classroom instruction,the multimodal vocabulary learning APP can significantly improve secondary vocational school students’ vocabulary learning in dictation and Chinese to English translation.(2)The questionnaires and interviews also reveal that secondary vocational students’ perceptions turn out to be relatively positive,it can play a valuable role in self-directed vocabulary leaning under the proper supervision from the teachers and will arose students’ learning interest.It has been suggested that dual coding and spaced repetition adopted by the multimodal software enhance the retention of words.This study is consistent with many previous studies on this point.However,this study focuses on secondary vocational students with relatively weak learning bases and self-control and adopts different vocabulary learning assessment methods,resulting in slight differences from previous studies on the findings of this study.This study has certain implications for secondary vocational students and for second language vocabulary teaching.Firstly,the application of the vocabulary learning APP is beneficial to stimulating secondary vocational students’ interest in English vocabulary learning,improving their vocabulary learning strategies,helping their learning autonomy,enhancing information literacy,and thus upgrading their overall English proficiency.Secondly,this study can enrich the teaching toolkit and resources for second language vocabulary teaching,enhance the fun of instruction,promote the transformation of teaching methods,and provide more possibilities for second language vocabulary teaching.