A Study Of The Semantic Association Strategies Training In English Vocabulary Learning

Learning strategies, which is one of the focuses in the study of educational psychology, could affect students'learning effect. In view of the important role that the vocabulary plays in language learning, more and more people pay much attention to its learning ang teaching, and many studies about vocabulary learning strategies come out. But most of them are just about some single strategies with simple methods of training, which are away from daily teaching and students'actual learning situation. Thus these studies could not solve real problems in students'vocabulary learning. The study in this thesis aims to help students construct their vocabulary learning strategies by semantic association training, and combine strategies training with daily teaching. The former results, latter results and delayed results of students'vocabulary test in experimental group are compared with those of students in control group after the training. The effects of students'immediate memory and delayed memory on new English vocabulary are proof-tested. In addition, the changes of students'perceived academic self-efficacy are also examined, finding that it improves distinctly by the training. It explores students'vocabulary memory effect which are affected by levels of perceived academic self-efficacy and experimental conditions. The results show that both students'self-efficacy levels and experimental conditions affect students'vocabulary memory result, but the result does not reach significant levels.A teaching experiment is carried on in two parallel classes in a normal university for about 8 weeks. Students are freshmen and English majors. The contents of training include the association of synonymy, antonymy, superordinate/hyponymy, semantic field and collocations from the semantic aspect of English vocabulary.Conclusions are made as follows:(1) By the training, the results of students'immediate memory and delayed memory in new vocabulary are improved. That is, the training has a great influence on students'new vocabulary memory effect.(2) By the training, the levels of students'perceived academic self-efficacy in English vocabulary learning have been improved. That is, it is effective to improve students'perceived academic self-efficacy by the training.(3) Through the multi-factor analysis of variance about students'memory effect of new English words which is affected by both levels of self-efficacy (high and low) and experimental treatment conditions (the experimental group and control group), it finds that the main effect of the treatment conditions is significant; the main effect of self-efficacy levels and its interactive function with the experimental conditions are not significant, and the researcher put forwards that the results occur because students with different levels of perceived academic self-efficacy incline to accept and use different types of learning strategies..