A Study On The Effects Of The Use Of Vocabulary Strategy On Junior Middle School Students' English Vocabulary Attrition

Vocabulary is the most basic material for constructing language system.Students' vocabulary level,memory ability and vocabulary learning methods all play a key role in whether they can make a success in English language learning.Currently the majority of students who are learning the foreign language are faced with the same situation that they spend a lot of time in learning vocabulary,but attrite quickly and have little sense of achievement.Studies on vocabulary attrition mainly focus on students who are majored in English or from higher institutions.But there are few studies focusing on researching the vocabulary attrition situation secondary school students.What's more,there is even less research on studying the attrition situation of students' receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary.Therefore,based on O'Malley and Chamot's meta-cognitive strategies,cognitive strategies,and social/affective strategies,the study aims to solve the problem of cultivating students to learn and use vocabulary strategies to reduce English vocabulary attrition.Based on memory theory and depth of processing theory,the study aims to answer the following questions:1)To what extent do students experience English vocabulary attrition after the summer vacation?2)To what extent does the use of vocabulary strategy affect students' receptive vocabulary attrition?3)To what extent does the use of vocabulary strategy affect students' productive vocabulary attrition?The subjects of this research are from two intact classes of grade two of a junior middle school in Hunan Province.During this experimental period,teachers teach students how to learn and use vocabulary learning strategies in the experimental class.While the control class is taught by direct teaching method.The data is mainly collected by means of vocabulary tests and analyzed by SPSS 21.0 to conclude the general results.The major findings are as follows: 1)After two months' pause of formal language learning,students experience serious vocabulary attrition.The time since onset of attrition is an important factor that influences students' vocabulary attrition.2)The use of vocabulary strategy has great effects on reducing students' receptive vocabulary attrition.Students who received vocabulary learning strategy have deeper processing to the vocabulary they have learned,and possess higher cognitive and understanding ability.Therefore,their memorizing maintenance to vocabulary is more durable.3)The use of vocabulary strategy has some effects on reducing students' productive vocabulary attrition.Students who received vocabulary learning strategy have highervocabulary ability of retrieval and production.Therefore,they are more capable of using vocabulary in context.These results manifest that students have experienced serious vocabulary attrition after a certain attrition duration.Cultivating students to learn and use vocabulary strategies can effectively help students reduce both receptive vocabulary attrition and productive vocabulary attrition.Constrained by the comparatively low proficiency level of the subjects,and relatively simple form of the vocabulary test,the research results of this paper have some limitations.