The Empirical Study Of The Effect Of Note-taking Strategy On English Vocabulary Memorizing For Senior High School Students

In 2003, Senior High School English Curriculum Standards (Trial Edition) formulated by the Ministry of Education set a higher requirement for senior high school students. They are requested to master 3,300 words and 400—500 idioms and collocations of the 8th level for the college entrance examination. This imposes a new challenge on English learners in their vocabulary learning. But the greatest challenge for students while they are learning English is how to memorize vocabulary effectively. There are many researches on vocabulary learning strategies, but there have been very few studies concerning senior high school and there have been even fewer about note-taking strategy. So, it's necessary to study what effects of note-taking strategy on vocabulary memorizing.This thesis first describes learning strategies and vocabulary learning strategies. Then based on some researchers' studies on note-taking, the author describes the meaning of this thesis' note-taking: note—taking strategy refers to a process of the students writing down the words and expressions that are pronounced by English teachers in class .The thesis uses two functions distinguished by Di Vesta & Gray: encoding function and external storage function to test how these two functions affect vocabulary memorizing . The thesis wants to study these two issues: 1) Is note-taking strategy beneficial to immediate recall of vocabulary? 2) Does review and note-taking outperform note-taking but no review in delayed recall?The thesis conducted an experiment, which involved 100 high school students, to compare the effect of note-taking and review on vocabulary memorizing.They are divided into two large groups,each large group is divided into two small groups:One is experimental group,the other is control group. By analyzing the data, the thesis got the results: 1) The experimental group that used note-taking strategy did better than the control group that didn't use note-taking strategy. 2) Those who use note-taking and review performed better on vocabulary recall than those who use note-taking but no review.Therefore, note-taking strategy is a strategy that is helpful to vocabulary memorizing.