The Effects Of Different Written Exercise Types On Vocabulary Retention Of Senior High School Learners Of English

Vocabulary knowledge which serves as an indispensible part of language learning, is of critical importance to language learners. Vocabulary learning is a huge stumbling block that hampers improvement of English proficiency in Senior School Learners of English. Learners regard it as one of the most difficult and time-consuming task. Although many of them spend a larger amount of time and energy in vocabulary learning and retention, the result is far from satisfactory. With the pressure of the forthcoming College Entrance Examinations, the problem of how to improve the efficiency of vocabulary retention is in urgent need of being explored. Words-focused exercise, focusing on the meanings of words and their use, is one of the effective means that can help learners with their vocabulary learning and retention. The present study, carried out with Senior One Learners of English at the same intermediate proficiency level, is intended to lend a helping hand by investigating the effectiveness of the types of word-focused exercises following reading texts on vocabulary retention of newly learned words.To this end, the researcher designed four different vocabulary exercises, including one filling-in-the-blank at a sentence level, three filling-in-the-blank at a sentence level, making sentences by combining some strings of words together and translating sentences by using the given target word. In this study, the major research questions will be as follows:(1) Does vocabulary retention significantly differ by using different exercises in immediate and delayed posttests?(2)Are recognition exercises more effective than production exercises on vocabulary retention?(3)Is there differential gain of knowledge in immediate and delayed vocabulary posttests? If yes, what are the differences of differential gains of knowledge?The participants in this study, chosen from 95 Chinese speakers of English as a foreign language at Senior High School in Gansu Province, were 30 intermediate learners of English at the same language proficiency level. They are all in Grade One and were grouped into four randomly. Four texts were selected from College Entrance English Examination in 2014 as reading materials. The target words were 20 unknown verbs selected from the four texts and were boldfaced and underlined in the texts. In each text, there are five target words to be learned. Each session, subjects of each group were required to read one text and learn target words through glosses and example sentences, then perform one type of vocabulary exercises aiming to test the five target words among the four types of vocabulary exercises. As subjects in and among each group were regarded homogeneous in terms of proficiency level, it could be regarded that all the subjects performed four types of vocabulary exercises during one session. After doing vocabulary exercises, subjects were required to provide L1 translation or L2 synonym, or write a sentence for each word in immediate posttest. Two weeks later, all the target words were measured in delayed posttest.The vocabulary knowledge scale (VKS) was modified and adopted in this experiment in order to test the meaning and usage of words and assess subjects’ vocabulary learning and retention. Statistics Package for Social Science (SPSS 16.0) was used as a tool to analyze the collected data. Repeated measures of analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that mean scores differed by using four types of vocabulary exercise in immediate and delayed vocabulary posttests. Paired samples t-test indicated that recognition exercises scored higher than production exercises in both immediate and delayed posttests. By comparing the results of paired samples t-tests, the mean score of three filling-in-the-blank exercise was the highest in immediate and delayed posttests.The major findings of the current study were presented as follows.(1)Different types of vocabulary exercises following reading texts could lead to different vocabulary retention effects in immediate and delayed posttests.(2)Recognition exercises were more effective than production exercises in terms of the receptive knowledge of the vocabulary.(3) Learners’ vocabulary retention in immediate posttests is better than delayed posttests no matter which type of vocabulary exercise is performed, which indicates that learners tend to forget some words over a period of two weeks intervals.(4)Three filling-in-the-blank exercises are the most effective and efficient exercise of the four types of vocabulary exercise. The reason is that three filling-in-the-blank exercises require more recalling and retrievals in different contexts than the other three types.In line with the findings, the researcher attempts to give some suggestions to teachers and learners of English and it is advised that newly learned words should be repeated and rehearsed from time to time, and that it is teachers’ tasks to arrange a feasible schedule to help learners encounter words at regular intervals. Although the study has many limitations, it is believed that it provides practical guidance for vocabulary teaching and learning.