An Empirical Study On Applying Word Association Strategies To Improve Vocabulary Learning Effect For Primary School Students

There is no doubt that vocabulary learning occupies an important position in the foreign language learning and the effect of vocabulary learning has special meaning in students' development of comprehensive language proficiency.In the evaluation of foreign language learning both at home and abroad,one important object is to examine students' mastery of vocabulary and their ability in lexical application.However,in real vocabulary teaching,there are some prominent problems in primary school students' learning attitude and learning method.How to improve students' vocabulary learning effect by updating the vocabulary teaching became one of the long-term and important needs in our English teaching.The author reviewed the Schema Theory and Memory Theory which are related to vocabulary learning.And the key concepts like vocabulary learning strategies and word association strategies were defined.On the basis of collecting and consulting foreign and domestic vocabulary learning research,especially the applied research of vocabulary teaching through association strategies,the author conducted an empirical study on improving vocabulary learning effect by word association strategies training which aims to deal with the following four research questions:1.What is the primary school students' present vocabulary learning situation?2.Can word association strategies help students to improve the effect of vocabulary memory?3.Can word association strategies improve students' ability in lexical application?4.Can strategy training change the students' attitude toward vocabulary learningand improve students' awareness of strategy use?For this study,the author adopted mixed research methods which include documentary analysis,qualitative and quantitative research methods.The author explored relative key theories and concepts by using the documentary analysis and summarized the relevant research both at home and abroad.For the main stage of the study,the author mainly adopted the experimental methods.Two parallel classes of a primary school in Hangzhou were selected as the control class and the experimental class.Special training in association strategies were carried out in the experimental class,the data were collected by qualitative and quantitative methods such as questionnaire,interview and test,and it was mainly analyzed by Independent Sample T Test.Based on the above research process,the study found that:(1)The current vocabulary learning situation of primary school students is not very optimistic.Through the questionnaire,there are prominent problems in students' vocabulary memory,lexical application and the awareness of strategy use.(2)Based on the results from delayed dictation and vocabulary test,the author found that the score of experimental class is obvious higher than the control class' score which also demonstrates word association strategies can help students in vocabulary memory.(3)In terms of lexical application,based on the vocabulary test results(lexical application part)tested by Independent sample T test,the Sig.value is less than 0.05 which indicates word association strategies training can enhance students' ability in word use.(4)By testing the data between pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire in the experimental class,the author found that students' attitude towards vocabulary learning have shifted from passive to positive.In addition,the results also suggest word association strategies can raise students' awareness of strategy use in vocabulary learning.Based on the above findings,the following suggestions are made:For teachers and educators,more opportunities should be provided for studentsin lexical application to improve students' words use.They are also supposed to use word association strategies more frequently to promote students' vocabulary learning effect.And it is necessary for teachers and educators to acquire more relative vocabulary teaching theories to guide vocabulary teaching.For students and learners,first,they should actively broaden channels for their vocabulary learning.Second,they should have good state both in emotion and attitude for the emotion management and attitude adjustment are very important to their vocabulary learning.