大学生通过联想记忆词汇的方法.doc

Abstract

Learning words is one of essential parts in learning English. Wilkins (1972) once said: without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. It exemplified the importance of vocabulary in learning a foreign language. A survey in memorizing English words shows that college students have many problems. While studies on memorizing English words are particularly few in China. With the guidance of memory clues and the traits of words, this thesis points out the relationship between memory and association, expatiates upon the basic theory of association memory, and reviews the relative studies on association memory methods conducted in China. Based on the review, this thesis puts forward specific association memory methods by resorting to the sound, form and meaning of English words, and aims at advocating the actual application of association memory methods in words learning process to cope with students’ problems of memorizing English words and improve word-learning effectively.
Key Words: college students; memorizing words; memory; association memory

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中文摘要

学习单词是英语学习的一个重要部分。曾有威尔金斯1972）说：“没有语法只能传达很少的信息，没有词汇则什么也无法表达”足以说明词汇在外语学习中的重要性。在大学生英语词汇记忆方法调查中发现他们的词汇学习中存在很多问题。然而目前在我国对词汇学习策略的研究甚少。本论文以记忆规律和词汇本身的特点为依据，阐述了记忆与联想的关系，论述了联想记忆的基本理论；回顾了我国在联想记忆词汇方面的相关研究，并在此基础上，针对单词本身特点提出英语单词的发音、词形、含义的联想记忆方法，旨在提倡联想记忆方法在词汇学习过程的实际应用，用以解决学生词汇记忆的问题，提高词汇学习效率。
关键词：大学生；记忆单词；记忆；联想记忆

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1. Introduction

Words are a basic part of a language, which are the backbone and essence of a language. Without memorizing words, no matter how familiar the learners are with grammar, how accurately they can pronounce, they can not use them and communicate with others by them. Lexical competence is at the heart of communicative competence, and can be a prediction of school success (Verhallen and Schoonen), which indicates the importance of vocabulary. The famous British linguist, Wilkins (1972) once said: without grammar, very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed. It is widely quoted to emphasize the great importance of learning words. Allen (1983) assumed that “lexical problems frequently interfere with communication, but communication will break down when people do not use the right words”. However, Zhang Dengzhi (2002) said, word memorization is the headache problem for Chinese college students in their English learning.
There are many difficulties in learning words. Words have too many meanings and are productive, which results in students’ small vocabulary. When they reach a high level of mastering and applying the words, they still feel in want of learning vocabulary. Memorizing words is the headache problem for most college students, who usually learn the words by rote. So the key to the problems is to straight out an effective method of memorizing words. And we will carry out an experiment on the effectiveness of memorizing English words.
The organization of the thesis is as follows:
Chapter One talks about the importance of words and the difficulties of learning words, and introduces the organization of the thesis.
Chapter Two analyzes the current situation and does experiment on college students’ learning English words, and points out the necessity of applying association memory for college students.
Chapter Three explains in detail theoretical basis of the association memory and the relationships between association and memory.
Chapter Four analyzes the specific association memory according to the features of English words.
Chapter Five offers a summary of all the previous chapters and provides the present study as well as the direction for further research.

2. Probe into the College Students’ Learning Words

2.1 Analysis of the college students’ current situation of memorizing words

Usually college students should have a demand of not less 4000 words, which can be used to deal with assignments and class. What’s more, to communicate with the others, and to pass some English examinations to get various certificates. The current fact is that most college students are poor in spelling and lack of interest, motivation, culture and study environment that affect their English learning. But, I believe that the poor way of memory resulting in a lack of vocabulary capability is the main factor that limits college students’ improving their English learning. If students have set up a large vocabulary, they can understand in reading and listening, and express themselves freely and easily. Vocabulary plays an indispensable role in English learning.

2.2 Experiment on the methods of memorizing English words in college
The experiment was set out on March 18, 2010 in order to testify the effectiveness of memorization memory. Two tests are designed among the subjects of the experimental and controlled group by 50 target words in one minute. The experimental and controlled groups should stay in one class during the experiment. The 50 target words were given to two groups. The experimental group was required to memorize the target words by association memory, while the controlled group was required to memorizing the target words by rote or by their own methods. Each group takes 30 minutes to memorize the target words. After 30 minutes learning both of groups should write the target words and meaning. The full scores are 100, 2 points for each target word. All the papers were examined and collected immediately after the test. A week later, the experimental and controlled groups were not noticed in advance and carried out the test of the target words again in the same way.
The results of two tests are listed in following table:

Table 1 Results of the Two Tests
Groups
Scores of Test One
Scores of Test Two
Experimental Group N=18
81
63
Control Group N=18
72
39

The result of the experiment proves that the association memory have a significant effect on memorizing English words for college students. Memorizing English words via association will improve the effectiveness and extend the period of the memorization of English words.

2.3 Necessity of applying the association memory
The previous experiment has showed that association memory has a significant and positive effect on learning and memorizing English words for college students. When facing the current situation where college students commonly have a small size of vocabulary and lack practical memory ways, according to the experiment and the study, association memory can actually enhance college students’ ability to remember vocabulary. Association memory is a practical and efficient way, based on sounds, forms and meaning of word to make learners memorize words easily.

3. Association Memory

3.1 Definition of memory
The Ancient Greeks created radical memory systems called Mnemonics, a name originated from their Goddess of Memory. In the ancient society, a trained memory was an immense assets, especially in public life. And there were no easy methods for taking notes and associating things, and the reason that early Greek orators could maintain long-winded speeches very accurately is that they recited the speeches through Mnemonic systems.
Memorization is very important for vocabulary learning and using: if words can not be remembered, few are likely to be produced properly. Therefore, it involves memory if we want to extend vocabulary. Since Hermann Ebbinghaus, a Germany psychologist published his experimental report in 1885, memory has become one of the fields in which lots of psychological experiments have been done (Yang Zhiliang, Guo Liping & Chen Nin 1999:2). Memory is very essential for study. And the process of learning needs to use one kind of memory. If we have no record of what the ancient happened, and have no memory about the previous experience, we would find it hard to learn, think and recite. On condition that human being has the memory, can they have the knowledge of the past, the present and the future.
Most psychologists define the memory in following way: memory is the ability to recover information about past events or knowledge or experience, the process of recovering information about past events or knowledge and cognitive reconstruction. The brain engages in a remarkable reshuffling process in an attempt to extract what is general and what is particular about each passing moment. In the perspective of information processing, memory is to encode, store the input information and retrieve it under circumstances(Chen Xianchun 1998:108).Memory may be divided into short-term(also known as working or recent memory)and long-term memory. Short-term memory recovers memories of recent events, while long-term memory is concerned with recalling the more distant past.

3.2 Relationship between memory and association
When college students need to recite English words, they should transfer words from short-term memory into long-term memory in their brain. And many kinds of processes are involved in order to transfer them. One method of accomplishing this transfer is to understand the new information comprehensively. A more important way in which we can achieve this transfer is to associate the new information with the information that we already know and understand in order to integrate the new data into our existing schemes of stored information. This kind of association takes place when the new information is tied to a piece of previous and familiar information or to a less difficult piece of information, which actually enhances the previous memory and provides a structure for retrieval.
The Greeks found that human memory is considerably an associative process that works through linking things together. For instance, when an orange comes across the students’ mind, immediately the object emerges into their mind, which enables them to recall the shape, color, taste and smell of that fruit; all these things are associated in their memory with the word orange. In fact, they remember things by association that helps store and retrieve new information by deliberately comparing it with something they know or understand very well.
Scientific research has showed that association is the basis for memory. The famous biologist Ivan Pavlov pointed out: memory is the product of associating the old and new knowledge through association. American psychologist William James has said: the secret of memory is on the basis of the various types of information that we want to remember to carry out a variety of associations, and these associations have become the hook all kinds of information, as long as the information emerges into mind, we can associate such a hook out of the data. Association memory refers to learners through a lot of way of association, so that the knowledge is to be a vivid memory, visualization, establishing a link between the old and new knowledge through the association, which is very impressive to the learners, so as to achieve the goal of mastering the new knowledge via the old one, and memorize quickly. In addition, the methods of association memory not only can enhance memory, improve efficiency, but also can develop people's left-brain, enhance imagination and creativity.

3.3 The Principle of association memory
According to biologist Ivan Pavlov, language is not only the product of cognitive development but also the tool to understand the world. Language memory is a cognitive activity: learners get the information and master it by making most of their cognitive structure, making concept system active in mind and utilizing relative thinking of objects. Vocabulary is one of basic elements of language which is not stored alone but associates with each other in mind. Actually we store the vocabulary by classifications in certain semantic networks and correlated to each other. This can be proved by the fact that the English word can be replaced or interpreted by other similar words. Vocabulary learning is such a process that exiting semantic nets continue to be activated and expanded. When a piece of new information or a new word comes into your mind, it will emerge into the semantic network which has already formed, and every relative element in the network will be involved in that in various forms. Therefore, when we try to memorize a word, we would store, search and retrieve the information about it and build many connections with the current cognitive structure.
In a word, vocabulary learning includes four steps: input, process, store and retrieve. What is difficult for most learners is that how to process effectively and store and memorize them for a long time. According to the theory of cognitive processing hierarchy, learning a word means to experience at two levels to process the word form (shallow hierarchy) and to process the word meaning (deep hierarchy).The deeper the processing is, the more permanent the memory will be. Therefore college learners should know the words’ sound, form, meaning and collocation, especially at the input link, at the same time should stress the interest and relevancy of the words in order to have a better understanding about the word.

4. Specific Associating Methods

We know that association memory of English is to make most of words’ relation on sound, form and meaning. And now we need to consider what specific associating methods are carried out in our daily to memorize English new words. For the sake of memory, we college learners should choose the accurate association memory methods according to the traits of the word. This kind of learning strategy is association memory strategy. The English words including information possessed in sound, form and meaning belongs to internal activating factor, while the information between the two or more than two words carried in the common sounds, alike spelling and similar meaning belongs to external activating factors (Yuan Lingli 2005:49). This chapter will focus on three main association memory methods: sound association, word form association and word meaning association. The following are the specific categories:

4.1 Sound association
At present, many learners separate the pronunciation from the morphology of the word, resulting in spelling and pronunciation errors, which clearly affect the quality of their memory of English words. In daily study college students should attach importance to learning English pronunciation rules, and associate word pronunciation with the shape-stabilized combination of phonemes and letters (or letter combination). It is easier for them to pronounce a new word; when they heard a sound of a new word, they can try spelling out the word so as to enhance their memory. For some special pronunciation of the word, they can put these words together in their mind a