An Experimental Study On The Effect Of Pairwork On Students' Vocabulary Learning

Vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar are the three underpinnings of a language and it is vital for students to master a large vocabulary in order to improve their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. There are a majority of researches on the vocabulary learning but they mainly focus on vocabulary teaching strategies and approaches. The researches from abroad and at home have shown that cooperative learning is one of the most creative and effective learning theories which can help create a better atmosphere for study, improve students' English proficiency and develop their cooperating awareness and it is considered as one of the new learning methods advocated by the national curriculum reform of basic education. Though researches on cooperative learning are sufficient, they are mainly done in reading and writing, few are done in English vocabulary teaching. In addition, pairwork and groupwork are both kinds of cooperative learning. Most researches are done in groupwork but few in pairwork.This thesis tries to apply pairwork to the English vocabulary teaching in higher vocational college and intends to answer the following research questions: 1. Is the application of pairwork more effective in helping students with their vocabulary learning? 2. What is the students' attitude towards pairwork? The research was conducted among the non-English majors from a college of Baiyu, Guangzhou,Guangdong province. One class was randomly selected as the control class in which the teacher employed a rather traditional way to teach English vocabulary while in the experimental class, the teacher applied pairwork to the English vocabulary teaching.The experiment lasted 15 weeks. After the experiment, all the subjects took a post test of the target vocabularies and questionnaires and interviews were carried out to learn about the effects on students' attitude towards pairwork and their cooperating awareness. The author also analyze all the data and discuss the results of pairwork on students' vocabulary learning.The statistical analysis shows that after applying pairwork to the English vocabulary learning, the students in the experimental class did better in the Englishvocabulary test than students from the control group. Additionally, the results of the questionnaires and interviews have shown that subjects held a positive attitude towards pairwork vocabulary learning and a vast majority of students favored the pairwork vocabulary learning method and admitted the benefits of pairwork learning.