Research On Keyword Method For English Vocabulary Learning With Senior Middle School Students

Vocabulary plays an essential role in learning a foreign language, because a solid vocabulary is necessary in every stage of language learning, but enriching vocabulary is a formidable challenge for so many foreign language learners. Furthermore, lexical competence is at the heart of communicative competence. Thus, the development of studies on vocabulary learning strategies is a significant concern for language researchers, and growing studies are concerned with vocabulary learning strategies from cognitive and psychological perspective, since the development of cognitive and psychological theories greatly enlightens language researches.Keyword Method (KWM), on the basis of cognitive and psychological theories, is first introduced by Atkinson in 1975. It is one of the most researched vocabulary learning strategies to date in western countries, and the majority of experiments have confirmed that it was superior to vocabulary learning conditions with which it was contrasted. Mainly due to the original KWM procedure through which both verbal and visual links between target words and first language keywords should be found, the experiments are mostly limited to alphabetic languages, whereas the examination of KWM efficacy in non-alphabetic language background is scarce. In this respect, current research makes contribution to related literature. In particular, it extends the literature in China in the age group of senior middle school students and in several testing perspectives. If KWM is proved to be a promising strategy in handling the challenge of English vocabulary learning for Chinese senior middle school students, it will cast light on English teaching and learning.Present experiments were conducted in authentic classroom setting with the design of between-group comparison. Two parallel classes were selected from Grade One in a senior middle school, one as KWM group and the other as SCM (semantic context method) group. Receptive, productive, spelling and comprehension tests were carried out after training with the former three tests containing both immediate and one-week delayed recall. The result obtained by comparing the scores of each test revealed that KWM was superior to SCM for recall of Chinese equivalents when...