An Investigation Of The Application Of Wordroot Strategy To Senior-High-School English Vocabulary Teaching And Learning

Word root composes an incredibly important part of English vocabulary learning. And a solid foundation of word root can promote students to memorize English vocabulary effectively. Since the end of1970's, wordroot strategy has been introduced into China(Wang Xuezhi,1991). Li Pingwu(1984) discusses the effect of the strategy in vocabulary learning. Other scholars(Weng Weibao,1988; Niu Daosheng,1998; Lin Yan,2009; etc) also argue the effect of wordroot strategy in vocabulary learning theoretically. They all recognize that the strategy can help students to memorize vocabulary, to enlarge their vocabulary. However, most English teachers know very little about wordroot strategy.Through the two months' experiment and the interviews, we discover that the teacher participating in the experiment realized that wordroot strategy was a very good one to help students memorize word forms and meaning and also realized the reasons for the inefficiency of vocabulary teaching; the students in the experimental classes said, wordroot strategy helped them memorize vocabulary effectively, still could expand their vocabulary, and what was more important was to stimulate their confidence of learning English. In the post-test, scores of the experimental classes were significantly better than the controlled classes, which also fully demonstrated the effectiveness of the wordroot strategy.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter1states the research motivation and the structure of this thesis. In Chapter2, the definition, classification of root and the effect of wordroot strategy are briefly introduced. Chapter3reviews previous studies of wordroot strategy at home and abroad, and introduces Ian Stephen Paul Nation's wordroot strategy(I. S. P Nation,2004). The fourth chapter discusses the objective of this research, hypothesis, the object of research, the research instruments, research procedures, experimental procedures, and analyzes and discusses the results of interviews and the pre-&post-test. Chapter5summarizes major findings, points out the limitation of this research, and provides some suggestions for further researches.