The Application Of Keyword Method To Junior High School Students' Vocabulary Learning

Vocabulary acquisition plays a vital role in language acquisition and its importance draws much attention in recent years. Research has consistently indicated that the use of mnemonic devices substantially enhances higher levels of retention of L2 vocabulary in comparison with other learning strategies. The Keyword Method introduced by Atkinson in 1975 is one of the mnemonic strategies. It can be described as a chain of two links connecting a foreign word to its English translation through the mediation of a keyword. The foreign word is linked to the keyword by a similarity in sound (the acoustic link); in turn the keyword is linked to the English translation by a mental image (the mnemonic or imagery link).The theory of depth or levels of processing (Craik & Lockhart,1972) reveals that the vocabulary which is deeply analyzed and involved in elaborative processing can be acquired quickly and kept for a longer time. The Keyword Method artificially creates subjective associations between the target word and the previous knowledge of the learners and therefore facilitates vocabulary learning. In addition, in his dual-coding theory, Paivio acclaims that human memory is better retained if stored by verbal and visual systems. The Keyword Method exactly constructs an imagery link between the target word and the keyword. Researchers from both abroad and at home show interest in this method and have applied it to many empirical studies, and the Keyword Method is proved to be an effective method of acquiring vocabulary.Previous research on L2 vocabulary learning by the Keyword Method has primarily involved the use of English keywords to learn the vocabulary of Indo-European languages such as French, Spanish, etc. Very few studies examined the Keyword Method on languages in Asia-Pacific language family, especially Chinese. The present study is designed to assess the utility of the Keyword Method using both Chinese and English keywords to acquire English vocabulary. The present study also attempts to testify the effectiveness of the Keyword Method on beginning learners and to find out the applicability of the Keyword Method in EFL classroom by comparing with uninstructed learning.108 junior high school students with roughly one year of English learning background (13-15 years old on average) learned the definitions of 20 new English words either by the Keyword Method or by uninstructed learning method. Immediate and long-term retention tests were carried out immediately and two weeks later. Due to many objective and subjective interferences, the scores of only 88 students were available to data analysis. The data were collected and analyzed by SPSS software. The results revealed that:1. Learners using a Keyword Method learn and retain more new English words and their meanings over shorter and longer spans than the uninstructed learners.2. The Keyword Method is more applicable to concrete words than abstract words.3. The application of Keyword Method does not affect the spelling and pronunciation performance of the students.The study proved the superiority of Keyword Method over uninstructed learning and verified the effectiveness of the Keyword Method on the vocabulary learning of beginning English learners and its application to regular EFL classroom. Nevertheless, the use of the Keyword Method should complement with other effective vocabulary learning strategies to achieve better effect.