A Study On The Effectiveness Of Output Exercises On English Vocabulary Acquisition

English vocabulary learning is a big challenge for junior middle school and primary school students. How to learn vocabulary effectively is the focus to foreign language teachers and researchers. This study used Swain's Output Hypothesis as the theoretical framework, and investigated the students'English vocabulary learning situation in Qufu City, aiming at testing the role of output exercises played in students'English vocabulary learning.This is an experimental study which has a process of "learning-exercising-testing" to achieve the research goal. There are 148 participants in the study,48 from the junior middle school, and 100 from the primary school. They are divided into the experiment group and control group respectively. Both groups used the same learning material but different exercises, namely output exercises and comprehension exercises. Three kinds of output exercises are designed to stimulate students to produce word spelling and meaning. Comprehension exercises require students to choose answers without any output. The data collected from two posttests were analyzed with the help of statistical software SPSS 16.0.The results showed that output exercises have advantages in promoting students'English vocabulary learning. Specifically, (1) the experiment group performed better than the control group on English word meaning acquisition, which indicates that output exercises facilitate acquisition of word meaning; (2) the experiment group had a better performance on word spelling than the control group, which indicates that output exercises facilitate acquisition of word spelling; (3) the experiment group performed better than the control group in linking word meaning with form; (4) output exercises had effect on long-term retention of newly-learnt words. Thus, in everyday English language teaching, English teachers should be aware of the importance of output in learning and encourage students to produce words in a variety of ways. Only in this way can we keep students'English learning interests and improve their English achievements in terms of vocabulary learning.