Effects Of Presentation Modes Of Processing Vocabulary Strategies On Vocabulary Retention-An Empirical Study

Vocabulary is one of the most important elements in a language. As we enter the 21th century, acquisition of vocabulary has assumed a more important role in learning a second language. And vocabulary teaching is of great importance to ELT in China. So how to teach vocabulary efficiently is what we want to solve in this thesis. In this thesis the present study has investigated and tested, by use of experiment ,the different effects of English vocabulary teaching and learning by adopting 3 different presentation modes: wordlist presentation,semantic field presentation and contest presentation.As is widely accepted, the senior high students' ability to use English greatly relies on their vocabulary size. However, the hardship of vocabulary retention and the high rate of vocabulary forgetfulness are often a great headache to both teachers and students. With the new curriculum coming into use, senior high students especially for the students in Jiangsu are required to master far more words in each unit than before. Nowadays, in Jiangsu Advanced with English by the Oxford University Press is used as their textbook according to the new NMET programme put forward by Jiangsu Bureau of Education. What impresses us most is that there are about 80 to 100 words in each unit , not including 30 words in Word power .It's of course quite hard for the fresh students to memorize all these words in ten days. As a teacher we are faced with the challenge of how to help students store words in English language . So the study on how to present English vocabulary efficiently is practical and necessary.Subjects students are from from intensive training Class 17 and Class 18 in Huai'an High School, Jiangsu Province. Forty-five English words have been chosen as materials for the experiments. In the experiments, subjects have been given three tests on each strategy at three different time: immediately after the relevant presentation mode,the third day and the fifth day respectively. Finally, SPSS(the Statistical Package for Social Sciences) has been adopted to analyze the data.Data analyses reveal the following major findings: Firstly, There are significant differences among the three tests by using different Presentation Modes at a certain time or different time. Secondly, Of all the three strategies , presentation by Wordlist works efficiently than that of Semantic Field and Context no matter in the short-term retention or in the long-term retention . But there is no significant variation between the latter two presentations. Thirdly, Multiple Comparisons show that significant differences exist in Test 1 not in 2 and 3:Presentation Mode 1 has the best effect while Presentation Mode 2 has the worst one, and Presentation Mode 3 lies in the middle.Supported by the major findings,relevant analyses and discussions, we are reach the conclusions of the study: First, In English vocabulary teaching and learning a close relationship exists between presentation modes and vocabulary learning and retention effects. Second, Wordlist is the best way to the senior high students when we want to learn and memorize more in a short time. Third, No matter what presentation mode we choose , we should memorize and review them more often. Only in this way can we put them in the long-term memory. Forth, It is the best way to use Wordlist in middle or final tests while Semantic Field strategy are used in our study of revision when we distinguish words.