A Study On Effects Of English Vocabulary Teaching To The Junior High School Students Under The Semantic Network

Vocabulary is the “building material” of the language, without language, we transmit nothing. For language learners, with a bunch of vocabulary is of capital importance, however, teachers present the words in simple way during the lesson, there is no connection between the words, it’s difficult for the students to master the new words, then it reduce students’ interests and confidence of learning English. Semantic network, proposed by American psychologist R.Quillian in 1968, can be used to present knowledge through interconnected elements. Vocabulary learning is the collision and the connection between previous knowledge and the new knowledge. Applying the semantic network to the vocabulary teaching can present the dynamic and networked development of vocabulary and it can largely increase students’ interest in vocabulary. However, few researches have been done in vocabulary learning adopted this method in junior high school. This thesis focuses on the effect of semantic network on English vocabulary teaching in junior high school and explore whether it can promote students’ efficiency of vocabulary learning as well as increase students’ interest in vocabulary learning.The subjects were 96 students in the No.1 Middle School in County Fumeng, and it’s a small county in Liaoning province. They were from two parallel classes in Grade 8, one was an experimental group who were taught vocabulary through semantic network, and the other was control group who were taught in the traditional way. Use the tests and the questionnaire to explore the influence of the semantic network in junior high school students’ English vocabulary teaching. The research findings show that semantic network can promote students’ efficiency of vocabulary learning, increase students’ interest in vocabulary learning and slow down the speed of forgetting. Several pedagogical implication and suggestions are proposed in the end.