A Study On The Application Of Association Strategy To English Vocabulary Teaching In Guizhou's Junior High School

2000 years ago,Plato pointed out that memory is a kind of association.Aristotle thought similarity,comparison and closing to nature are the rules in association.In 19 th century,some psychologists were interested in association strategy and tried to study it in vocabulary learning.And then more and more linguistics pay more attention to association strategy,such as,Kent,Miller,Cook,etc.Almost every language learner thinks that words play a very significant role in language learning.We must be very good at memorizing words if we want to master a new foreign language.“Without grammar,very little can be conveyed;without vocabulary,nothing can be conveyed”,a very famous specialist whose name is Wilkins(1972)indicated in his book.Though a lot of researches about association strategy had been done abroad and in China,but there weren't many researches about association strategy in English vocabulary teaching in Junior high school.Currently the English learners,especially the junior high school students with poor English level in Guizhou,think vocabulary learning is difficult and boring.They spend much time to memorize the words but forget quickly.Therefore,it is essential to look for and use a more effective way to teach and learn vocabulary,and strategy training is important too.After reading lots of related literature works,the author found that association strategy enable teachers to present words to students in different and interesting ways and it is easy for students to master,so the author wants to have a further study of the application of association strategy in English classes in Guizhou's junior high school.So this research will try to solve the following questions:(1)Can association strategy in vocabulary teaching improve the junior high school students' English vocabulary learning?(2)Can the association strategy in vocabulary teaching enhance junior high school student's interest in English vocabulary learning?(3)How to apply association strategy to English vocabulary teaching in junior high school?To help the students learn words better and more effectively with association strategy,a sixteen-week experimental research had been conducted in two classes with poor English level students in No.40 junior high school of Guiyang.After studying the association strategy,the author designed a detailed procedure to apply association strategy in vocabulary teaching,it aimed to improve the English vocabulary learning ability and interest.During the experiment,the author adopted questionnaire,interview,pre-test and post-test to collect the students' real learning data.After comparing the teaching results between tradition word teaching class and association strategy teaching class,we can see that association strategy not only contribute to improve students' grades but also to the improvement of learning ability.According to the statistic of the questionnaire and interview,majority of the students in EC like classes with association strategy.Over 70% students can use the strategy individually and 63% students even can use association strategy in other subjects,it further testified that the way the author train association strategy is successful and it can provide some practical methodologies in vocabulary teaching for junior high school teachers.However nothing is perfect,the result of this study has a few limitations,such as limited experimental time,the questions on pre-test and post-test may be too difficult for the poor level students which can't show their real English level,the factors affect the students' learning are complicated and so on.The previous empirical researches aimed to train the association strategy using ability of the junior school students were rare.Thus,the author sincerely hopes that more association strategy empirical researches involving participants of junior high school students will be done to further confirm this study's feasibility,and provide more useful means to promote the using of the association strategy for junior high school students and teachers.This thesis is consisted of seven chapters.Chapter One gives an introduction of the research's background and significance,the purpose and research questions.Chapter Two is Literature Review.It consists with the definition of association strategy,the studies on association strategy in China and abroad,the classification of association strategy and introduction of vocabulary study.Chapter Three is theoretical frames which are Cognitivism,the theory of depths of processing and the prototype theory.Chapter Four is methodology.It consists of research questions,participants,instruments,experiment procedures.Chapter Five is the application of association strategy to vocabulary teaching.Chapter Six states the results of the thesis.It consists of analysis of data collected in the experiment.Chapter Seven is the conclusion of this thesis.It mainly talks about the major findings of the study,limitations of the study,suggestions for further study and implications for English teacher.