A Study Of The Effect Of Vocabulary Strategies Training On The Sixth Grade Students' English Reading

Vocabulary is the building material of language,and vocabulary teaching plays an important role in foreign language teaching.Due to the lack of guidance on vocabulary learning strategies,most students do not have a correct understanding of vocabulary learning,leading to the lack of learning methods,efficiency,review and different ways of memorizing words.So the improvement on students' vocabulary and English reading performance has been constrained.Therefore,it is worth discussing how to understand the use of vocabulary learning strategies and guide students to use vocabulary learning strategies correctly.Unfortunately,there are limited researches on the learning strategies of elementary school students,especially on vocabulary learning strategies training.This paper attempts to promote vocabulary strategies teaching in the sixth grade English classroom,combining strategies teaching with normal language teaching,improving the reading teaching effect,and helping students to break through the difficulties in learning English.It aims to improve the students' reading ability and lay the foundation for them to continue to learn English in higher schools.In this study,the author spent one semester to carry out an experiment which involves one hundred and six students from two regular classes---Class Two,Grade Six and Class Three,Grade Six in the Experimental School of Jiangsu Xishan Senior High School located in Huishan District,Wuxi.The experimental class and the control class were taught by the same teacher.The average English proficiency of the two classes of students can be considered of a similar level.Before the experiment,the students in the experimental class and those in the control class were tested for English vocabulary and reading proficiency respectively.The test results showed that:(1)The students in two classes had the same vocabulary level before the experiment,and there was no significant difference.According to the average score of the both two classes,the students' vocabulary test results were not satisfactory,their vocabulary mastery was not optimistic,and their vocabulary was obviously insufficient.(2)There was no significant difference in the reading proficiency between the two classes.The reading level of the experimental class and the control class was the same.According to the score,the reading effect of the two classes was not good.The above results show that it is necessary to guide the sixth grade students in vocabulary strategies,so that they can learn to adopt a variety of vocabulary learning strategies,and then find effective vocabulary learning strategies that are suitable for them,and improve their vocabulary and reading effects.For a whole semester,the author conducted vocabulary strategies training for the experimental class and maintained the normal teaching in the control class.After the training,the author arranged one vocabulary post-test and one reading post-test for the two classes.In addition,ten students from the experimental class were randomly selected for interviews.By collecting and analyzing the experimental data of the post-experiment test,combining the contents of the interview records,and by making a careful comparison with the pre-experiment test results,the data were synthesized and analyzed,and the conclusion was reached:(1)Through the training of vocabulary strategies,the students' vocabulary was expanded and their reading scores were significantly improved,and their vocabulary scores were positively correlated with their English reading scores.(2)Through the training of vocabulary strategies,the students' awareness of using vocabulary strategies in their reading was improved to a large extent,and their awareness of active learning and self-confidence were significantly enhanced.Finally,this paper puts forward the implication of this study to the primary school English vocabulary strategies training in reading teaching,plus the shortcomings of this study and the suggestions for further research,so as to inspire researchers and English teachers to continue their efforts in this field and provide more guidance for students'vocabulary learning.