The Application Of Assimilation Learning Strategies To High-school English Vocabulary Learning

Vocabulary, as one of the three elements (pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar) of English, is fundamental to the development of English proficiency. As the educational reform is developing in depth, the demand of vocabulary is increasing gradually, which further multiplies the difficulties of learning vocabulary. The High School English Syllabus (1986) requires students to learn a vocabulary of 1,600 words. At that time, the students viewed the 1,600 words as"stumbling block". According to New Criteria for English Courses for General High School (2003), the students'English ability of middle schools and primaries schools in our country is divided into nine degrees. Students should pass Grade 7 when they finish high school. One should reach Grade 8 when passing NMET, while the demand of vocabulary is 3,500—4,000 words, which doubles that in 1986. The English proficiency of a student who finishes high school will be similar to that of a college student. The goal is hardly attainable unless we English teachers improve the vocabulary teaching methodologies and English learners adopt effective vocabulary learning strategies. In view of the above-mentioned facts, vocabulary learning strategies have attracted more and more attention, and many researches of English vocabulary learning have been done in our country and abroad. But most of them are about college students or adult learners, and a few are about high school students.This study aims at carrying out a research on vocabulary learning strategies based on Assimilation Theory---Assimilation Learning Strategies. Based on the hypothesis, this study mainly deals with English vocabulary learning in high schools. By conducting an experiment on Assimilation Learning Strategy, the writer tries to find out how to help students in high school to learn English vocabulary more effectively and efficiently. It takes five months to perform the experiment. After the five months'experiment, we can conclude that with the teacher's instructing, the ALS should be reinforced as it can improve students'vocabulary greatly. From the analysis of the experiment, we find that ALS is effective and efficient in remembering new words by the existing relevant knowledge.This thesis consists of the following seven parts: Introduction provides a brief account of the purpose and the general description of the study. Chapter One reviews the main theories and the related researches. Chapter Two is devoted to theories on cognitive theory, vocabulary knowledge and AT. Chapter Three provides a brief description of the study concerning its objectives, subjects involved, instruments used for data collection, the procedure of experiment and data analysis. Chapter Four gives analysis and discussion about the results. The writer uses SPSS 11.0 to analyze the results of the tests. Chapter Five is the pedagogical implications and some suggestions for the application of Assimilation Learning Strategy. The last part is the conclusion of the whole research. It sums up the findings of the research and provides some suggestions for the future English vocabulary learning in high schools.Due to the time limitation and other practical restrictions, the participants in this study consists of only 89 students from two classes in one school, it needs a further study to prove whether the result is universally acknowledged.