Semantic Mapping Strategy Based English Vocabulary Teaching In Junior Middle School

Without sufficient vocabulary a learner can not use the language actually because vocabulary is the basis of a language. However, researches on vocabulary learning have not been paid enough attention to. How to improve the vocabulary levels of students have been puzzled by education researchers and teachers in a long time. A lot of studies have explored that to instruct the vocabulary learning strategies for the students is an effective way to improve their vocabulary learning abilities. This requires that the teachers not only need to teach vocabulary but also need to attach importance to vocabulary learning strategy training.In the United States and some other countries, the semantic mapping learning strategy which is based on Ausubel's meaningful learning theory has been extensively studied and applied. Semantic mapping strategy usually refers to brainstorming associations that a word or concept has and then to show these results with arrows and graphs. The purpose of this study is to verify that (1) in which activity semantic mapping strategy works better:the new words learning or vocabulary review activity; (2) whether the students work more actively in vocabulary learning after applying semantic mapping vocabulary learning strategy.In this study, the researcher adopted a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. The main experimental steps in this article are as follows:The author chose two full-time teaching classes at random in Ruicheng Secondary School and these two classes are arbitrarily defined as Experimental Class One and Two. Before the experiment the researcher handed out a questionnaire and vocabulary test paper for 80 students to investigate their vocabulary learning strategies, and discovered that the students need vocabulary learning strategy training urgently. During the experiment, in Class One, the researcher required students to create a semantic map in teaching the new vocabulary; while in Class Two, students were ordered to construct a semantic map in the review activity. The strategy training approaches mainly included:1) the semantic map constructing under the guidance of the teacher.2) group activity and 3) individual activity. A vocabulary test is carried out before and after the experiment. The researcher recorded the feelings and performances in this experiment by interviewing and observing the students.After a six-month experiment, by using statistical software SPSS17.0 to analyze the experimental data, the experimental results showed that:1) There was no significant difference between Class One and Class Two in the pre-test. When the experiment finished, the post-test showed that Class Two scored higher than Class One, that is to say, semantic mapping strategy works better in the vocabulary review activity than in the new word learning activity.2) After applying the semantic mapping vocabulary learning strategy the students worked more actively in vocabulary learning.The author hopes that the findings of this study will be helpful for the junior middle school teachers and students in English teaching and learning, and also hopes that in the future there would be more in-depth studies focusing on semantic mapping strategy in the application of other aspects of English teaching and learning.