A Study Of Vocabulary Learning In Middle School: Combination Of Metacognitive Strategy And Mind-Mapping

Mastering a large vocabulary is necessary for English language learning. Recently quality education has been advocated in middle schools in our country that shifts the focus from teaching to learning in order to develop students' ability which is important for them not only at school but also afterwards. With this shift in emphasis, the classroom teacher is faced with the challenge of how best to help students store and retrieve words in the target language. However, our understanding of the relationships between words, even the metalanguage to discuss those concepts, is decidedly lacking. Faced with serious problem of division among students into opposing extremes, teachers feel puzzled and helpless. As a result, they are at a loss what to do. When confronted with failures again and again, students become discouraged and finally give up.Since the 1970s great contributions have been made in the field of second language learning and teaching and in the area of cognitive psychology, including the experimental studies on memory strategies. Many research studies carried out have proved that metacognitve strategies have positive relationship with vocabulary learning. However, little has been done on middle school students due to the lack of experience on explicit instruction and actual manipulation of metacognitive strategies.Mind-mapping is the latest scientific achievements in the field of English research to which science of cranial nerve, memory, psychology and linguistics are creatively applied. Based on the co-ordination of human's left and right brains, each English word is separated reasonably and a computer-assisted flash picture makes it possible for learners to memorize its pronunciation, spelling and meaning quickly. Though mind-mapping is newly-born, controversial and unpopularized in vocabulary teaching in middle school, yet it is worth attempting. For effect is more important than argument. Any strategy will be the best one if it achieves the best effect. Different learners may have different strategies in memorizing words. It is a new task how to respect students' individuality, meet their different demands, how to cater for most students and lay a solid foundation for their lifelong learning. In view of the controversy over the necessity and feasibility of strategy training, this thesis aimed to demonstrate the validity of metacognitive strategy training and mind-mapping in vocabulary learning in middle school students. To achieve this, the writer presented a framework with a five-step model for strategy training in formal English classes -preparation, presentation, practice, evaluation and expansion. To ensure the authenticity and validity, two sources were collected for data analysis including questionnaires on metacognitive strategies and English vocabulary tests. The subjects were 100 senior middle school students from Yuehua School in two natural classes, with the present author as their teacher. One class was appointed as experimental class (EC), the other as control class (CC). The research data came from their scores in the pre- and post-vocabulary tests and the pre-training metacognitive strategy questionnaire. In the end data was analyzed by SPSS.The results showed that explicit training of MS and mind-mapping has significant positive effect on the vocabulary learning of Chinese senior students. Based on the findings of the study, suggestions on lexical teaching were provided. Of course, more work should be done in this area for many strategies proved effective in western countries should be tested if they are effective for Chinese students.