A Study On The Effect Of Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode On Senior High School Students’ English Vocabulary Learning

Vocabulary is the basis of language learning.Vocabulary presentation,as the first stage of English teaching,has attracted more and more attention of English teachers in senior high schools.With the continuous deepening of English Curriculum Standards for senior high schools,many researchers try to use different theories,methods and teaching modes to conduct researches on English vocabulary learning.It is of great significance to explore the efficient ways of vocabulary presentation in the process of vocabulary teaching.Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode,which is based on the theories of Input Hypothesis and Information Processing Theory,has gradually become an important field of vocabulary learning researchIn view of this,the present study adopts classroom experiments and interviews to compare the effects of two vocabulary presentation modes(Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode and Traditional Word-list Vocabulary Presentation Mode)on the vocabulary retention of senior high school students in Zhenjiang City with an attempt to answer the following two research questions:1)What are the effects of Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode on senior high school students’ English vocabulary retention?2)Which group of the students,the high achievers or the low achievers,is more affected by the use of Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode in the process of the English vocabulary acquisition?And why?The study is made up of two parts:quantitative and qualitative research.The quantitative research included a two-month experiment.The experiment involved 100 students of Grade two from two classes in Zhenjiang No 1.Senior High School.The pre-test was carried out at the beginning of the experiment.One class was the control class(CC),while the other one was the experimental class(EC).In CC,the author adopted traditional Word-list Vocabulary Presentation while Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode was employed in EC.The pilot test was carried out to test the new words’familiarity to ensure that the students in EC and CC had no prior knowledge of the target words.The pre-test was conducted at the beginning of the experiment.The immediate and delayed post-tests were conducted after the application of Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode.The author computed and analyzed the scores of both tests with the software of Statistical Package for Social Science(SPSS)25.0.Qualitative research was conducted in the form of the interview at the end of the experiment,of which the interviewees were eight students from the experimental class.Four were from the high achievers and the other four were coming from the low achievers.The interview process was tape-recorded for further analysis and discussion.The detailed analyses of quantitative research and qualitative research yield the findings as follows.Firstly,Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode has exerted positive effects on vocabulary retention of English vocabulary learning for senior high school students.To be specific,the result of the immediate vocabulary test shows that the application of Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode and Traditional Word-list Vocabulary Presentation Mode can have a positive effect on short-term memory,and there are no significant differences in the effect on senior high school students’ short-term memory as p value is higher than.05.However,in the delayed post-test,the results show that Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode has a greater effect on the long-term memory of senior high school students as p value is lower than.05 after the independent sample t test of the delayed vocabulary test.The qualitative analysis of the interview reveals that the students in EC can benefit a lot from Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode,which can stimulate their deeper processing,provide more effective retrieval clues and offer more convenience for information extracting,so Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode can conduce to the retention of information.Secondly,Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode has a greater effect on the high achievers than the low achievers.The results show that the mean difference between the immediate post-test scores and the delayed post-test scores for high achievers is 5.46 while the mean difference between the immediate post-test scores and the delayed post-test scores for low achievers is only 0.11,which indicates that low achievers are less affected by Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode.The qualitative analysis of interview reveals that the reasons leading to the great differences lie in that high achievers are more willing to take part in challenging tasks actively with Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode.Once fulfilling the tasks,high achievers become more excited and confident.Besides,They can combine the new vocabulary information with the prior knowledge structure,which enriches the relevant information,deepens the way of information processing,and further improves vocabulary retention.By comparison,low achievers with poor English vocabulary lack the ability to connect the target words with the previous experience,which may reduce their interest and confidence.It can be seen in the records of the interviews that the high achievers are fully dedicated to the task while the low achievers can hardly integrate related schema information and the existing schema resources.It makes low achievers process the individual information units one by one,and thus increases their cognitive load.The implications from the findings of the study are as follows:Firstly,Thematic Clustering Vocabulary Presentation Mode has positive effects on vocabulary retention and is supposed to be strongly advocated and widely applied in senior high schools.Teachers should make good preparations in advance on the basis of the theme or topic.Secondly,this study provides English teachers with necessary information to help better use of vocabulary presentation,guides students of different English proficiency to construct schema during vocabulary learning and creates mental linkage between the new and old knowledge,which will contribute to the retention of the vocabulary.