Influence Of Guessing Strategies Training Of High School Students On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Mastery of vocabulary is crucial for the whole process of learning English. Howto expand vocabulary size, increase learning efficiency and reduce hardship of roteretention become leading problems faced by teachers and learners. A series ofresearches has been inspired by this consensus in this field both at home and abroad.With increasingly prosperous researches of vocabulary learning in the past twodecades, more and more researchers begin to turn their attention to incidentalvocabulary acquisition.Based on theories of depth-of-processing hypothesis (Craik&Lackhart,1972),the involvement load hypothesis (Laufer&Hulstijn,2001) and input hypothesis(Krashen,1985), Results of numerous studies on the possibility and effectiveness ofIVA (Stroller&Grabe,1993; Nation,1998; Hucky&Coady,1999; Paribakt&Wesche,1999; Susan Gass,1999; Hulstijn,2001; Pulido,2004; Mondria&Boer,1991; Laufer，2001)showed that IVA through extensive reading is an effective way ofacquiring vocabulary and learner’s guessing ability is an important factor toIVA(Knight,1994; Hustijin,2001; Rieder,2002). Ellis (1994) believed that strategiestraining can improve IVA effect, Huckin and Coady (1999) believed guessing wordsfrom context should be trained. This study attempts to use guessing strategies trainingto improve learners’ guessing ability and find out its influence on IVA learning. Thisstudy tries to verify whether the previous theories can also be applied to Chinese highschool students.Research method: This study selected80students as subjects from two classes(each class40) in Benxi County Fifth Middle school, whose scores of finalexamination showed no significant difference. The first step is to get an overallpicture of students’ application and understanding towards vocabulary learning strategy through vocabulary strategies questionnaire (Gu&Johnson,1996)). Then areading and vocabulary test was carried out in both classes, followed by a guessingstrategy training lasting ten weeks for students in the experimental class. Except forguessing strategy training, the teaching schedule, teaching content and learningmaterials are exactly the same in both classes. After training, both classes took anthervocabulary strategies questionnaire and vocabulary test. The data were processed bystatistical software SPSS18.0. This thesis attempts to explore the correlation betweenguessing strategy and IVA, which mainly is embodied in the following four aspects:1. What is the actual situation of high school students’ vocabulary learningstrategies application?2. Is there a correlation between vocabulary guessing training and incidentalvocabulary acquisition?3. Whether vocabulary guessing training affects learners’ strategy use or not?4. Whether vocabulary guessing training affects learners’ strategy learningconcepts or not?The following conclusions are drawn: First, most students are aware of theimportance of VLS but their knowledge and application of specific techniques is atrelatively low level; Second, VLS training can improve students’ awareness ofstrategies and even help students master some specific vocabulary strategies; Third,guessing strategy training plays a positive impact on incidental vocabulary acquisitionand guessing strategies training helps improve IVA in effect.From analyzing the experimental results, several pedagogical implications can begeneralized: First, teachers should let students engage actively into classroomvocabulary learning. Second, it is important to improve the theoretical quality ofEnglish teachers. Third, it is necessary to guide students to become the masters ofvocabulary expansion. Fourth, learner should expand social and cultural backgroundknowledge of vocabulary. Fifth, teacher and learner should emphases cultivatingstudents’ language learning strategies.