Research On The Association Network Function In L2Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary is a basic element of a language, and vocabulary acquisition is a very important part of language acquisition. While for quite a long time, there is a challenge in vocabulary acquisition: why it’s so easy to forget the newly acquired words? This dissertation tries to discuss the process of vocabulary acquisition from the aspect of cognitive psychology and answer the long-lasting problem in English vocabulary acquisition. The author uses the association network in this research, and through a series of experiments and questionnaires, the author proves the effectiveness of this mode.The two classes of non-English majors in Henan Normal University are the subjects of this experiment, one of them is taken as the control group and the other is taken as the experimental group. Aiming at the research aim, there’re two research questions in this dissertation:(1) Is the association network better than traditional strategies in promoting the short-term memory and long-term memory of Chinese learners of English in vocabulary acquisition?(2) Is association network more effective in promoting the short-term memory and long-term memory of the intermediate level Chinese learners of English than the other levels of learners? Through the analysis of the data, the author finally gets a conclusion that the association network can do positive and effective job to the L2vocabulary acquisition; it’s especially useful to those high proficiency level learners instead of the intermediate proficiency level. But same as any other learning strategies, it has its own limitation–it can’t be applied to any levels of students and it can’t be applied to any kind of words. Thus, teachers should help students develop a habit of remembering words with the association network.This thesis is grouped into six chapters. Chapter1is a brief introduction of the research background, research objectives and significance, the structure of the thesis is also in chapter one. Chapter2is a literature review of second language acquisition and reviews of the researches done by predecessors. Chapter3is the theoretical framework of the thesis. Chapter4is about the research questions, research subject and object and the data collection part. Chapter5is the analysis and discussion of the results. Chapter6is about the findings and implications and also the shortages of the research.