Word Processing Strategies And Students' Vocabulary Development

This study investigated the possibility that there might be one efficient strategy helping students decode and encode English words.After reviewing English teaching in the past few decades,we realize that we emphasize too much on grammar teaching and focus on students' ability in listening,speaking,reading,and writing,while neglecting vocabulary learning.However,when the demand for middle school students to have a larger vocabulary is getting stronger day by day,there seems to be a lack of effective approaches that can help students master words more effectively. Recently educators both at home and abroad have become aware of these learning difficulties.As for the causes,the direct one is students' lack of effective word attacking strategies.With years of great effort,Dr.Li Ruyun has found an effective word attacking strategy:orthographic cipher.Yet educators and experts in English speaking countries still have not figured out,what this orthographic cipher is.They think that the nature of the cipher is a fascinating theoretical question.They do not know what it is.But in China now the orthographic cipher is beginning to catch the attention of more and more Chinese educators and teachers.My study is to test if this cipher can improve Chinese middle school students' abilities in decoding and encoding words directly and effectively.My study will focus on these questions:(1) What is the most important factor that hinders students' ability in decoding and encoding words?(2) How much can we improve students' decoding and encoding ability using the orthographic cipher?(3) What is the implication for their future learning?In my research,the subjects came from a middle school in one of the districts of Beijing,including 85 junior students from 3 classes in Grade Three.We used the cipher in the experimental group for more than two months when they were in Junior 3.In general the populations were thought to be at the same level in decoding words before they entered Junior 3.Two measures(a pretest and a posttest with 50 pseudo words served as the reading test) were given to compare the experimental group with the control group.The students in the treatment group did significantly better on the posttest.I think my research,though limited,can prove to some extent,that this cipher may have been a good method that can help students develop a good word decoding and encoding ability.But due to various reasons,this study also has its problems and limits.We definitely need more researches like this to test the effectiveness of this cipher with various students.