An Empirical Study Of Vocabulary Teaching Based On The Memory Theory Of Information Processing Model

This thesis is an empirical study of applying the memory theory of information processing model to vocabulary teaching in college. This study aims at applying the latest memory theory to vocabulary teaching in order to help students overcome vocabulary learning difficulty and improve the efficiency of vocabulary teaching in college.The acquisition of vocabulary is the vital element to understand and being understood, and it is now recognized as the central and fundamental role to the language acquisition. It is a fundamental element that relevant to the four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing all together. However, vocabulary teaching and learning in classroom is still not satisfactory in China. Traditionally, vocabulary is learned by imitation, repetition, and rote memorization. The result of these rote learning skills show the present vocabulary teaching is not successful. Therefore, it is necessary to find an efficient way of vocabulary teaching. The memory theory of information processing model offers a good solution. As one of those theories of psycholinguistics, information processing theory is concerned with the process in which people receive, deal with and apply the information they got. The exertion of the information processing theory in vocabulary teaching can be represented as the process of helping the students identify, store and recollect the vocabulary.This research is on the basis of the memory theory of information processing model, which divides the processes of vocabulary acquisition into encoding, storage and retrieval. From the information processing perspectives, we have discussed the characteristics of each stage and proposed the relevant strategies as to the characteristics. An empirical teaching experiment has been carried out between experimental group and control group so as to testify the effectiveness of the strategies.With the results of the experimental teaching, some vocabulary principles have been proposed, which can make some pedagogic contributions to the English vocabulary teaching and learning. Teachers would consciously adopt different memory theories and techniques to train and instruct their students in different vocabulary teaching stages, which will greatly promote the memory ability and prove to be significant in vocabulary teaching.