Effects Of Vocabulary APPs On Distance Learners’ English Vocabulary Acquisition:A Case Study

This study mainly deals with the effects of using vocabulary apps on distance learners’ word acquisition.Most of distance learners’ English is poor,thus extremely low pass rates are very common when they take part in some crucial examinations including Adult Bachelor’s Degree in English test.However,they complain the most difficult thing in English learning is that they don’t know the words.Vocabulary apps emerge as a popular means to learn words in recent years as they can easily arouse learners’ interest and can be used anywhere at any time.Therefore,more and more studies pay attention to word acquisition with vocabulary apps.However,studies mainly focus on vocabulary breadth,and only a few deal with the vocabulary depth.Most of the studies take the full-time students,such as primary and secondary school students,vocational middle school students and college students,as the subjects,and only a few deal with distance learners.What’s more,in-depth case studies are very rare.Based on the multimodality theory and context theory,this paper attempts to answer the following two questions:1)What are the effects of using vocabulary apps on distance learners’ vocabulary breadth?2)What are the effects of using vocabulary apps on distance learners’ vocabulary depth?By carrying out experiments and interviews,this paper explores the English word acquisition of three distance learners with the application of a selected vocabulary app "Baicizhan".Three subjects are students of a broadcasting and TV university.They respectively received pre-tests and post-tests on both vocabulary breadth and depth before and after the experiment.In addition,they respectively received four interviews.The findings of this paper are the following:1)Vocabulary apps can significantly improve the vocabulary breadth of distance learners.The vocabulary breadth of three subjects is significantly increased though differences exist,and the increased quantity of words of one subject even exceeds that of the lexicon.Among the reasons,motivation is a major factor for the study of distance learners.The stronger the motivation is,the more frequently the metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies are used,and the better the learning effect will be.Furthermore,word memorization has a close connection with two factors,i.e.the attribution and self-efficacy.2)Vocabulary apps cannot significantly improve the vocabulary depth of distance learners,which is mainly due to the learner’s notions,word learning strategies and input and output activities.Differing from the acquisition of vocabulary breadth,learners shall conduct meticulous study on more items(such as pictures,sentences,videos and so on)of the words,and understand the specific meanings in different contexts in order to improve vocabulary depth.These findings provide guidance for distance learners to learn words with vocabulary apps.Firstly,teachers shall stimulate the students’ learning interest by skillfully utilizing their motivation,and guide the students to select suitable learning strategies based on individual cognitive differences.Secondly,students shall increase their input and output activities and improve self-efficacy of word memorization so as to enhance vocabulary depth.Because the length of the experiment is relatively short,and the sample size of this study is very small,future studies are recommended to enlarge the sample size and use more research methods such as the questionnaires.