An Experimental Study On Effects Of English Vocabulary Memory To The Non-English Major Students Of Advanced Vocational Colleges Under The Spreading Activation Model

Memory and forgetting are twins which are never separated. In the aspect of English vocabulary, the teachers and students are always puzzled by the rapid forgetting rate. What's more, they can't get satisfaction from the memory effect on English vocabulary. In English vocabulary, any word connects with other words by some semantic relation. It is Collins and Loftus (1975) who first put forward the spreading activation model which is one of semantic memory models in cognitive psychology. The model is built on a complex semantic network in which specific memories are distributed in conceptual space with related concepts that are linked by connections. Memory is conceptualized as a network of nodes interconnected by links. The nodes correspond to concepts and the links correspond to various types of relations between concepts. Thus, under the spreading activation model, the semantic relation between words can be further explored. A semantic network can be constructed in terms of the semantic similarities to aid the students to store and memorize words. At the same time, when a word can't be remembered, the students can recall some related ones and infer the target one in order to keep the memory effect permanently. The conclusion is that the spreading activation can enhance the memory effect of vocabulary and decrease the forgetting rate.This thesis describes an experimental study on effects of English vocabulary memory to the students of advanced vocational colleges under the spreading activation model. Based on the spreading activation theory and the theory of depths of processing on vocabulary, in this experimental study, 120 non-English major participants can be selected as subjects. The thesis aims at helping students to build up the semantic network of lexicon to facilitate English vocabulary memory and consolidate them longer and longer by using the spreading activation model. So the research questions are: (i) Are the scores of the experimental class higher than those of the control class in the immediate test? Can the spreading activation model facilitate the memory of the words in the immediate test? (ii) In the delayed test, is the effect on vocabulary memory in the experimental class better than that in the control class? (iii) How do the students evaluate the memory effect of vocabulary by using the spreading activation model?The major findings are: (a) the spreading activation can help students learn and memorize vocabulary quickly and stimulate students to seek out a word's related words in daily vocabulary learning and memorizing. (b) In the immediate test and the delayed test, there are different changes about Standard Deviation of the experimental class and the control class. The spreading activation model influences actively to higher level subjects because the spreading activation model offers them a good chance to reorganize and construct the learned words in their minds effectively. However, lower-level subjects have a smaller and more limited amount of vocabulary than do higher-level ones, which might cause them to have a more limited range of possible responses to be activated. (c) in the aspect of affective factors, the spreading activation model can make the students change ideas on memorizing vocabulary and keep a good mind in the procedure. (d) the spreading activation model can facilitate the vocabulary size. (e) learning and memorizing polysemy aided by the spreading activation model, the subjects can activate more and more learned words related to the highest-frequency senses. (f) The memory effect of nouns is better than that of verbs by using the spreading activation model.The implications from these findings can be summed up as following: In this research, the teacher helped subjects to construct vocabulary semantic network aided by the spreading activation model and make the word's inner relationship which is the crucial factors in meaningful vocabulary leaning and memorizing clearer. In this way subjects got a better performance in vocabulary memory effort. The second important implication is that vocabulary teaching should be closely related to constructing the relations of these related words aided by the spreading activation model. Finally, it may create vocabulary learning environment by themselves.The thesis is organized as follows.Chapter one makes a general introduction of the rationale and significance of the present study. Chapter two reviews the related literature on the spreading activation model and vocabulary memory. Chapter three is the theoretical framework of this thesis, which includes the spreading activation theory and the theory of depths of processing. Chapter four aims to describe methodology including the purpose of the present research, research questions, subjects and instruments, teaching procedures of the experimental class and the control class and data collection. Chapter five mainly describes how to analyze experimental data of the pre-test, the immediate test, the delayed test and two kinds of questionnaires and results after the teaching experiment and sum up the results and some discussions about some questions related to the experiment. Chapter six makes conclusions about the paper including major findings, practical implications, significances, limitations of the study and some suggestions for the further study.