An Experimental Study On The Effects Of Different Modes Of Presentation On Vocabulary Retention In Primary Schools

It is well known that vocabulary is the carrier of human's thoughts. Vocabulary together with pronunciation and grammar are the three essential elements of language. It also plays a very important role in the English learning process in primary schools. During the six years of English learning in primary schools, relatively less grammar knowledge is demanded than vocabulary. Thus vocabulary teaching in primary schools has gained more attention. Nevertheless, it is found that learners in primary schools have difficulties in learning vocabulary and that a majority of them lose interests in learning English. Both students and teachers are in dilemma.With the development of English teaching and learning, there are mushrooming amount of researches on the vocabulary presentation modes which affect learners' retention of vocabulary. Nevertheless, the existing researches focused much more on college and high school students, with most of which discussing the different effects on different presentation modes. The viewpoint is made clear that when presentation modes meet learners' learning preferences, the effects of vocabulary learning turn out much better.The current research, focusing on the presentation mode by pictures and the presentation mode by chants, tries to find an effective way of vocabulary learning for primary school students to raise their interest in learning and improve their learning ability. An experiment was carried out, in which two natural classes in Grade Four from Shiqi Primary School in Panyu District in Guangzhou, who were taught by the author from Grade One with the equivalent English proficiency, were chosen as the subjects. Class One was set as the visual class(the VC) and Class Two as the auditory class(the AC). There were 44 students in each class, with a total number of 88. The VC was taught with the presentation mode by pictures and the AC was taught with the presentation mode by chants respectively. It tries to answer the following two research questions:(1) Which presentation mode can better help students' retention of vocabulary in primary schools, the presentation mode by pictures or the presentation mode by chants?(2) Which presentation mode can raise students' interests in learning vocabulary in primary schools?Upon answering the above questions, the perceptual learning style preference questionnaire adopted from Oxford and revised by the author, another 17-itemed questionnaire on learners' vocabulary learning interest, a pre-test, an interview, an immediate test and a delayed test were employed as instruments for the study. The results of tests and questionnaires were analyzed by SPSS. Students' interviews were transcribed. Based on the data collected from the questionnaires, interview and tests, the author of the current study has made conclusions as follows.(1) Both the presentation mode by pictures and the presentation mode by chants can better improve students' retention of vocabulary in primary schools. To be more specific, the presentation mode by pictures has priority in learners' immediate memory, while the presentation mode by chants has priority in learners' long-term memory.(2) Both the presentation mode by pictures and the presentation mode by chants can raise learners' interest in learning vocabulary. Learners with the learning preference of visual type benefit from the presentation mode by pictures, while learners with the learning preference of auditory type benefit from the presentation mode by chants.The present research has also provided some implications to vocabulary learning and teaching in primary schools.