A Study Of The Effects Of The Strategy Of Semantic Association On Senior High School Students' English Vocabulary Acquisition

In the foreign language learning,the amount of vocabulary that a learner has plays a key role in achieving his or her proficiency.The strategy of semantic association(SSA,for short)is defined as a strategy of vocabulary learning that assists a learner in discovering the semantic relationship between lexical items and using it consciously to pursue such a goal.Specifically,the vocabulary learning driven by SSA is characterized by the establishment of lexical sets or groups for a studious purpose,rather than singling lexical items as independent,disconnected or even isolated entities.However,in the traditional vocabulary teaching,teachers often focus on the meaning and usage of vocabularies,which leads to two problems.One is that students lack sufficient interest in vocabulary learning,and the other is that students' vocabulary is not up to standard.With a body of research available at hand,it seems to us that little has been done in relating SSA to vocabulary learning by senior high school students,especially the effect of such an approach might have on the probability of increasing words.This thesis attempts to conduct an experimental study of this issue along this line.Following the spreading-activation theory and levels of processing theory,the present study explores the following three related research questions:(1)To what extent does SSA affect the senior high school students' interest and methods of learning lexical words?(2)To what extent does SSA affect the senior high school students' size of receptive vocabulary?(3)To what extent does SSA affect the senior high school students' size of productive vocabulary?In order to answer the three research questions above,the study conducts a 16-week vocabulary teaching experiment,investigating a total of 99 students from two natural classes in the first grade of a senior high school in Yueyang.During the experiment,the experimental class' vocabulary teaching is based on SSA,and the students in the experimental class successively learn six sub-strategies of semantic association in stages,while the controlled class receives regular vocabulary teaching,that is,the meaning and usage of lexical words are taught only.Such instruments are comprehensively used in the study,the tests of vocabulary,students' writing texts,questionnaires and interviews.Firstly,pre-tests of vocabulary size,post-tests of vocabulary size and one writing training are administered to students from the experimental class and controlledclass;secondly,the students from the experimental class complete the questionnaires about SSA before the experiment and at the end;finally,six students in the experimental class are randomly selected for interviews according to the levels of test results.After the experiment,the collected data are input,organized and analyzed through Excel and SPSS 23.0.Through the systematic analysis of the collected data,the study draws several conclusions as follows:(1)SSA has a positive impact on students' interest and methods of learning lexical words,which is specifically manifested in students' active review of the learned words and the accumulation of the new words.At the same time,students are willing to try new methods of learning lexical words;(2)SSA has a positive effect on senior high school students' receptive vocabulary,which is reflected in a significant increase in the size of receptive vocabulary;(3)SSA has a positive effect on senior high school students' productive vocabulary.Specifically,students' controlled productive vocabulary has expanded significantly;the effect on the size of free productive vocabulary is manifested in the significant increase in the proportion of low-frequency words in students' composition texts,but at the same time the proportion of low-frequency words showed a fluctuation.The major findings of this study are that SSA has shown some effectiveness in the promotion of senior high school students' interest of learning lexical words,the enhancement of students' awareness of using methods of learning lexical words and the significant increase of students' vocabulary size,which helps to students' English vocabulary acquisition.Therefore,SSA is feasible in English vocabulary teaching in senior high school,and it has guiding significance in a way.