A Study Of The Effects Of Different Ways Of Presentations On Vocabulary Learning

Having been neglected for many years,vocabulary is viewed as one of the most essential components of language learning nowadays.When it comes to vocabulary learning,a widespread view is that it is advisable to make a shift away from learning words with their equivalent first language(L1)translations to rely on other ways of vocabulary presentation,such as pictures,semantics,contexts and multimedia.It's necessary for learners and teachers to select and use proper ways of word presentation to learn and to teach.As a result,there is a debating argument that what kind of vocabulary presentation is most conducive to vocabulary learning in recent decades in the field of national and international second language(L2)learning.In the previous studies of second vocabulary learning,the criterion of measuring learners' mastery of vocabulary is simply based on orthography and meaning by a large number of researchers.Moreover,language researchers and teachers should also focus on and address the superiority of other aspects of vocabulary knowledge besides meaning and form in L2 vocabulary learning,such as grammar and collocations.Therefore,multidimensional vocabulary knowledge is the major concern of the present study as well.On the basis of other researchers' studies,the present paper examines the effects of different ways of presentation on vocabulary learning,retention and multidimensional vocabulary knowledge under the theoretical guidance of levels of processing,dual coding theory and involvement load hypothesis.The three ways of vocabulary presentation were:1-words presented in isolation,namely,word-list presentation,2-words presented with pictures,namely,word-picture presentation,3-words in meaningful sentence,namely,word-context presentation.The three dimensional vocabulary knowledge were orthography,meaning and form and grammatical functions,and were measured from the receptive and productive aspects.To this end,45(41 females and 4 males)Chinese English learners from an university in Hubei Province were selected and assigned to three groups with similar English proficiency to learn 15 target words.To measure the effects of each way of presentation on vocabulary learning and dimensional vocabulary knowledge,each target word was tested in 6 different ways.And two weeks later,the six tests were conducted again to measure the effect of each way of presentation on vocabulary retention.In addition to the experiment,after completing the immediate post-tests,three participants in each group were chosen to have an interview,answering some questions related to the study.The data of the experiment was collected and analyzed by SPSS 13.0 and the data of the interview was decoded as the supplemental materials.The results showed that there was no statistically significant difference in the scores of the tests taken by the participants in the three groups on vocabulary learning,retention and multidimensional vocabulary knowledge.The possible reasons for this are discussed,and it suggests that these three ways of vocabulary presentation,namely,word-list presentation,word-picture presentation,word-context presentation,are effective methods in learning vocabulary and knowledge.In other words,a sentence context and pictures may show little superiority over word-list on vocabulary learning and knowledge.The present study is.able to help language learners and teachers to learn and teach vocabulary better by comparing and analyzing the effects of different ways of presentation on vocabulary learning.According to the results,some suggestions are put forward:firstly,word-list presentation is an effective learning method which can enable learners to make a great progress in a short time,especially for beginners;secondly,teachers can enhance learners' comprehension and retention of vocabulary by pictures or videos properly;thirdly,L2 learners and teachers are suggested to make most of the different ways of presentation and combine them together to achieve the best vocabulary learning performance;finally,multidimensional vocabulary knowledge plays a crucial role in vocabulary use and more attention should be paid to.