An Experimental Study Of Memory Strategies And Memorizing English Words

In the process of language learning, vocabulary is of major importance. Words, or rather morphemes, words and idioms, are the carriers and conveyors of meaning. However, vocabulary has been a neglected aspect of language teaching as well as of language learning(Carter, 145). From 1960s, vocabulary has rapidly changed in status from 'a neglected aspect of language learning' to an area of growing research and publication. Especially in the area of cognitive psychology, great contributions have been made, including the construction of the information-processing system and the experimental studies on memory strategies, such as keyword method and learning words in context.This research is about an experimental study of memory strategies and memorizing English words. Its purposes are:(1) to introduce the cognitive basis of memorizing words, Craik and Lockhart(1972) constructed the model of the information processing system. Reacting to the mechanistic nature of computer models of human memory, Craik and Lockhart (1972) argued that memory depends on what learners do as they encode new information. That is to say, the depth of processing makes a difference in how well we remember it. In particular, the way we rehearse information influences the quality of our memory. The materials involving deep processing are more memorable than those which involve shallow processing.(2) to verify whether vocabulary is something to be naturally acquired or not. One idea is that words are acquired through activities such as reading, listening, speaking and writing, and thatrote-memorizing words was meaningless just like some western scholar (Krashen, 1989; Parry, 1991) claim that vocabulary is naturally acquired by students by reading extensively and if a word occurs to the reader seven times constantly, the word can be memorized by the reader. So they don't think learners should make effort to memorize words.(3) to investigate the most widely used memory strategies by Chinese college students. Most of the investigations were done in Western countries, and nearly all the subjects were learning the Indo-European language.(4) to test if learning words in context and key-word method are useful for Chinese students. They are the most debating methods recently and have been much investigated in Western countries, however, have been lacked attention in China. As we all know, learning strategies are usually influenced by the learning environment, and vary among different learners. Then, do Chinese students use the same strategies as the foreign learners? Are the popular strategies which are effective for foreign learners also effective for Chinese students? In this study, the researcher chose these two methods to test their value and to examine if they are useful for Chinese students.Two sources were collected for data analysis. They were participants observation and questionnaires. The researcher did two experiments for this study. The first experiment was on the method of learning words in context. The subjects were 40 Chinese students from College of Professional Education in Qufu Normal University who were taking a first-year university English as aforeign language course. The second experiment was on the key-word method. The subjects were 80 students at Qufu Normal University. Forty of them were sophomores from English department and others were sophomores from College of Professional Education. Sixty students answered the questionnaire. Twenty of them were English majors in Qufu Normal University who were also the subjects in experiment one; twenty of them were from the department of physics and others were from College of the Professional Education who also took part in experiment one.The first finding of the study was that most of the students believe that vocabulary should be memorized just contrary to the notion of Krashen who claimed that vocabulary is something to be naturally acquired. To acquire vocabulary naturally, students should be provided with a learning environment in which th...