Effect Of Episode Designing:Teaching English Vocabulary To Chinese Senior High School Students

English vocabulary is a very important but difficult part for most Chinese students in English learning.With the deepening of the reform of college entrance examination in China,The National English Curriculum for Ordinary Senior High School(2017Edition)puts forward requirements of a larger vocabulary for senior high school students.However,the effect of English vocabulary teaching in senior high school is seldom satisfactory due to various reasons from environment to resources.The generally practiced English vocabulary teaching method is often monotonous and dull in class.Both teachers and students put a lot of efforts into it,but it has little effect.Based on this,scholars from China and other countries have done a considerable amount of research on English vocabulary teaching,and have put forward a variety of methods.In this background,the author conducted an experiment on the effect of teaching English vocabulary to senior high school students in China,based on episodic memory.Episodic memory refers to an individual's memory of personal experiences.Different from semantic memory,episodic memory is unique in that information extracted from situations is accompanied by self-consciousness.Psychological studies have shown that knowledge associated with events that the subject actually experienced is generally easier to access and retain in the subject's memory.The old information in students' mind is the students' existing knowledge,and some of the old information is linked to the setting,time,and plot of the knowledge and preserved.As a result,this study attempted to capitalize on episodes in English vocabulary teaching,in order to help senior high school students to strengthen their memories of words in vocabulary learning.This study used the research methods of experiment,questionnaire-based survey,and interview.For the interview,the subjects were all the other English teachers for Senior High School Grade 1,from Xinping NO.1 High School in Yuxi,Yunnan.For the teaching experiment and the questionnaire survey,the author chose 90 students from 2classes of the same grade as the subjects.Class A1 was the experimental class,and Class A2 was the control class.Before the experiment,questionnaires and test papers were given to the students to measure their starting levels of vocabulary and assess their starting attitudes towards vocabulary learning.In 1 month of the experiment,the teacher used games and activities,made up stories,and designed specific tasks and situations to teach vocabulary and consolidate the students' learning in the experimental class.In the control class,the teacher mainly used the generally practiced vocabulary teaching method obtained from the interview on the teachers.After the experiment,questionnaires and test papers were given to the two classes to examine their proficiency in vocabulary and attitudes.The 5-point Likert's scale was used in the questionnaire.All the data from the tests and questionnaire surveys were analyzed with SPSS.The study was intended to answer two questions: whether the vocabulary teaching method based on manipulation of episodes improves senior high school students' English vocabulary learning more effectively than the general vocabulary teaching method,and whether the former is more acceptable to the students than the latter.The results show that the vocabulary teaching method based on manipulation of episodes improves senior high school students' vocabulary learning more effectively than the general vocabulary teaching method,and that the former is more acceptable to the students than the latter.The results suggest that in the process of vocabulary teaching,students' episodic memory can be considered and special episodes can be incorporated into the teaching process.This kind of vocabulary teaching method can not only stretch students' attention span in vocabulary teaching class,but also make students unconsciously add specific episodes to their vocabulary knowledge,which is more conducive to deepening,and enhancing to a certain extent,their memories of vocabulary in learning.