A Study On The Relationship Between Senior High School Students' Affix Knowledge And Vocabulary Breadth And Depth

As an important index of learners' English proficiency,vocabulary knowledge constitutes an inherent part of English language learning.It includes many dimensions like affix,vocabulary breadth knowledge and vocabulary depth knowledge.In this study,Nation's Vocabulary Size Test was used as a tool for vocabulary breadth knowledge testing,and Read's Word Associate Test was used as a tool for vocabulary depth knowledge testing to investigate the status quo of senior high school students' vocabulary knowledge.This study aims to find out the characteristics of senior high school students' affix knowledge,and investigate the relationship between their affix knowledge and vocabulary breadth and depth knowledge.Although many previous studies have been done on affix knowledge and vocabulary,the majority of them focus on the affix knowledge and vocabulary breadth,and seldom take vocabulary depth knowledge into account.Based on the constructivist view of learning and the depth of processing hypothesis,120 students of three different grades in Lintao No.4 Middle School were selected as subjects for the vocabulary size test,vocabulary depth knowledge test and affix knowledge test in this study.In the first stage of the experiment,a vocabulary breadth knowledge test was carried out to measure the participants' vocabulary size.Then the 120 participants were divided into three groups(those over 3000 words,between 2000 and 3000 words,and with less than 2000 words respectively)according to their vocabulary size.A week later,the vocabulary depth knowledge test was conducted for all the subjects.Two weeks later,the affix knowledge test was conducted.After collecting data from three tests and analyzing the data with SPSS 21.0,the results are as follows:firstly,there are significant differences in the three dimensions of identifying,understanding and using affixes among students.Specifically,students performed best in identifying affixes,followed by understanding affixes and finally using affixes.Secondly,the participants' affix knowledge is correlated with both their vocabulary breadth and depth knowledge.The implications of the study are twofold.For one thing,teachers should help students sort out the forms,meanings,functions and grammatical knowledge of various affixes.For another,teachers and learners should focus not only on the basic knowledge of pronunciation,spelling,and meaning,but also pay more attention to the vocabulary depth knowledge like grammar,collocation,associations and register.