| Vocabulary is the foundation of language construction. When one wants to learn a new language well, not only dose sh/e need to grasp a large number of words, but also knows the rules of their collocations. Vocabulary collocation refers to the habitual or customary occurrence of one word with another word. In other words, it"refers to the restrictions on how words can be used together"(Richards, J. et al: 2005). Linguists and researchers both at home and abroad are gradually realizing that learner'competence of using collocations confines the development of the fluency and accuracy of their second language. Therefore, it is self-evident that to master the collocation of a foreign language is very important. However, the pressing problem in senior middle school English learning and teaching is that students can not memorize and use collocations and many teachers fail to teach collocations in a creative way. As a result, it is easy to find that many students tend to use unacceptable collocations in their writings and utterances. Collocation learning is a laborious and protracted accumulative process. So, what teachers and researchers should do is to find ways to help student acquire collocation effectively.Belonging to cognitive psychology, Dual Coding Theory (DCT) has now drawn increasing attention since it was introduced by Allan Paivio (1971). DCT assumes that cognition in learning consists of the activity of two separate coding systems of mental representation, one system specialized for language is referred to as verbal system, and the other specialized for dealing with nonverbal objects and event is referred to as imagery systems. The two systems can interact and inspire each other though arranged in different structures. This theory has been applied to language teaching and yielded fruitful outcomes. Some researches have proved its effects on reading comprehension as well as vocabulary acquisition in EFL teaching practice.Based on DCT, the present study is an empirical research aimed to examine the effects of students'English collocations acquisition. To be more specific, the present study focuses the following two questions: (1) Can the learning strategy based on DCT improve students'English vocabulary collocations memorization at both short-term memory and long-term memory? (2) Which category of collocation (n.+n.; n.+v.; adj.+n.; v.+adj.; v.+n.) enjoys statistical relevance in light of memory effect?In order to testify the effect of DCT in practice, the author conducted a teaching experiment. The data of present study was obtained from 69 senior middle school students at nearly the same proficiency level. 35 students in experimental class and 34 students in controlled class from grade one served as subjects in these tests. During the testing process (lasting two and a half months), the controlled class was taught in conventional way while a modified method based on the DCT was adopted in the experimental class.All the subjects underwent the pre-test, pre-questionnaire, immediate test, delayed tests, post-questionnaire and individual interview. The pre-test was designed to guarantee the proficiency level of language and set referential statistics for the delayed tests. The pre-questionnaire aimed to detect the original strategies for collocation learning. The immediate tests and the delayed tests were intended to test the collocations in short-term memory and long-term memory. The content of the post-questionnaire is the same as that of pre-questionnaire. This design aimed to figure out the shifts of learning attitudes and strategies. The interview was aimed at confirming the same questions as in questionnaires. Two delayed tests are expected to avoid the one-time occasionality in data-collection and ensure the validity of the test. The statistic processing software SPSS and Excel were applied to process the results of pre-tests, the immediate tests and delayed tests, trying to find out the key to"Can the learning strategy based on DCT improve students'English vocabulary collocations memorization at both short-term memory and long-term memory?"The analysis of the total score of each collocation categories was supposed to dig out the answer to"Which category of collocation (n.+n.; n.+v.; adj.+n.; v.+adj.; v.+n.) enjoys statistical relevance in light of memory effect?"The conclusion is: The learning strategy based on DCT is of great help to improve student's English vocabulary collocations memorization at both short-term memory and long-term memory. The effect of memory varies with different collocation categories and category adj.+n. enjoys statistical relevance in light of memory effect.The above mentioned findings and analyses are illuminating for language teaching and leaning in Chinese EFL learners'context. First, collocation should be learnt and taught by making the best of interactions between the verbal and nonverbal systems. Second, English teachers should try their best to improve their collocation proficiency for better classroom conducting. Hopefully, the findings of this study can benefit other English teachers.However, the present study still has some limitations. For instance, the sample investigated in this research is relatively small; the subjects were relatively low in English aptitude. So, whether the findings of the present study can apply to other parts of China is remain to be seen.
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