An Experimental Study On The Application Of The Associative Memory Strategy In English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High Schools

Vocabulary,as the foundation of English learning is of great importance in English teaching.Nevertheless,some problems still exist in English vocabulary teaching in high schools.Many teachers just read words and then explain the meaning,leading to the result that students have little interest in English vocabulary learning and are lacking in the ability of self-learning and the awareness of innovation.In view of this,this study attempts to teach English vocabulary based on the associative memory strategy,aiming to find the effect of this method.The researcher chose 100 students from two classes of Senior Two in a high school in Jiangsu Province to carry out an empirical study.The same teacher adopted the associative memory strategy in the experimental class(EC)and used the traditional method in the control class(CC).The experiment lasted 17 weeks.A pretest and two post-tests were conducted to test whether students' vocabulary size and application ability were improved after the experiment.The same questionnaire before and after the experiment was performed in the EC to analyse whether students' interest in learning English vocabulary was enhanced after the experiment.Furthermore,an interview was performed in the EC after the experiment to verify the effectiveness of the implementation of associative memory strategy.The analysis of the data shows that the post-test scores of the EC show significant progress compared with those of the CC,which displays that the associative memory strategy can broaden students' English vocabulary size and improve their vocabulary application ability.In addition,the results of the questionnaire and the interview indicate that students' learning interest in the EC has been significantly enhanced compared with that before the experiment.The research findings can provide some implications for English vocabulary teaching in senior high schools.