Effects Of Vocabulary Learning Strategies On English Vocabulary Memory Of Junior High School Students

A language is made up of pronunciation,vocabulary and grammar. Vocabulary is the core of language learning and the basic building material of a language.Without words,no matter how well one learns grammar and pronunciation, he is unable to express his feelings, viewpoints and ideas.In view of the important role of vocabulary in language learning, vocabulary learning strategies begin to be taken seriously. The domestic and foreign scholars have done a lot of research in this field, but there have been few related studies on junior high school students.Based on the survey of the use of students’vocabulary learning strategies in Junior2and making a reference of the domestic and foreign research results about English learning strategies and English vocabulary learning strategies,we intend to explore the effect of vocabulary learning strategies on the vocabulary memory of the Junior2students through an empirical study.The students of this research were63students of Class1207in Junior2,in Naya Middle School, Changsha, Hunan Province. By questionnaires, learning of vocabulary learning strategies, vocabulary tests and face-to-face interviews,the author wanted to answer the following questions:1.What vocabulary learning strategies do the junior2students use?2.What kind of impacts would appear on short-term and long-term memory of vocabulary from the use of vocabulary learning strategies?3.Can junior2students find suitable vocabulary memory strategies for themselves through the learning of vocabulary learning strategies?Based on the survey of the pre-questionnaire to Class1207,the author has found that the students can use some vocabulary learning strategies,but the use frequency is very low. Before learning the vocabulary strategies, the students had the first vocabulary test. Then they started to learn the vocabulary strategies and took the second vocabulary test. After one month they had the third vocabulary test, a post-questionnaire and face-to-face interviews.Through the results’ analysis of the three vocabulary tests and the post-questionnaire, it is shown that with the familiarity with vocabulary learning strategies,the students have got higher and higher scores in the tests.And the vocabulary learning strategies had a positive impact on both vocabulary short-term and long-term memory. At last, the face-to-face interviews also indicated that learning the vocabulary strategies is necessary, from which the students could know more strategies and select the most suitable one or several to memorize vocabulary. Meanwhile,to enhance the effect of vocabulary learning, we should encourage and guide students to use vocabulary learning strategies as much as possible.