An Action Research On The Effects Of Word Association Strategies In Senior High English Vocabulary Teaching

In terms of vocabulary learning, a problem exists that it is time-consuming and low-efficient, which bothers and confuses lots of scholars and educators, and impairs L2 learner's initiatives. During the teaching, the author found her students had problems in learning vocabulary, such as being low initiative, lack of understanding of word knowledge, low-efficient in learning words, unable to develop receptive word knowledge to productive word knowledge, easy to forget words learnt. To improve word learning effects and help students learn words better and acquire word learning strategies, the author conducted a four-month action research to instruct students the word association strategy. Her students are different from normal Chinese senior high students in that they won't take part in Chinese College Entrance Examination, instead, they will go abroad to study for college and take part in the American College Entrance Examination (ACT) and ELTS. They have relatively higher languange proficiency and more capable in listening, reading, speaking and writing and they have a larger number of vocabulary. But there is a big discrepancy in their languange proficiency.The word association strategy is based on the theories of cognitive psycholinguistics. Recently, the cognitive psycholinguistics find word knowledge is stored in mind in a hierarchical network. The nature of L1 mental lexicon and that of L2 mental lexicon are different. L1 mental lexicon is semantic-related, while L2 mental lexicon is a combination of semantic and non-semantic relations. With the improvement of language proficiency, the non-semantic relations develop into semantic-relations. The factors that cause the differences are lack of highly contextualized language input, the existence of L1, and the cognitive abilities of the L2 learners. Although these factors are unavoidable, the studies of word learning strategies found through appropriate word strategies instructions and implementation, the word learning outcomes can be improved.Anderson, J. R raises the idea of propositional network in his book entitiled Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications published in 1985 that association among propositions facilitates understanding. Therefore, theoretically speaking, word networks should be able to improve L2 vocabulary learning outcome. Craik & Lockhart brought the Depth-of-Processing Hypothesis in 1972,who consider that the deeper the brain processes the information, the deeper it can be retained, so the memory should be stronger. Besides, According to the concepts of memory, the relation between new and old words is the key through which new word knowledge is stored in the mind, and which helps the storage of word knowledge. Based on the theories above and the teaching situations, the author conducted her teaching.Through a four-month action research, the author attempts to find whether the word association strategy can solve the problems students have. The research questions are 1. To what extent can the application of word association strategy improve students' understanding of word knowledge? 2. To what extent can the application of word association strategy motivate students' interest in learning words?By questionnaires and classroom observation, the author found 1. After the implementation of action research, students have a correct and comprehensive understanding of word knowledge. When they are using dictionaries, they are not only concerned about the equivalent L1 translation, but also other specifications of word knowledge, like collocation.Their interests in word learning grow.2.Word association strategy significantly improves learning efficiency, which further motivates students' interest in learning words. They would like to spend more time in learning words.Each day, they would spend about 20 minutes reviewing the words they learnt that day. Besides, they could take advantage of various materials. In class, they also became more active.Because of the specialty of the class, the size of subjects, and the time limit of the research, a lot of shortages exist, which require further research.