An Overview of Researches on English (L2) Vocabulary Memory Strategies in China over the Last Decade.doc

an overview of researches on english (l2) vocabulary memory strategies in china over the last decade (1997-2006) contentsacknowledgements.iabstract & key words.ii1. introduction12. a summary of past researches.12.1 vocabulary memory strategies .22.2 empirical studies.52.3 studies of theoretical bases and mechanism explanation83. future research orientation.103.1 methods used to investigate memory strategies.103.2 factors in memory strategy use.113.3 training learners in the use of memory strategies.114. conclusion.13references.15iiabstract: since the last decade of 20th century, great importance has been attached to vocabulary learning strategies in second language vocabulary acquisition studies and a number of specific strategies for learning have been identified, among which the memory strategies occur frequently with vague definitions and explanations. however, in the whole processes of vocabulary acquisition, memorization is the crucial one. this dissertation therefore aims to summarize the significant research findings concerning the vocabulary memory strategies in chinese context over the last decade. first of all, it tries to conclude a relatively clear definition and taxonomy of memory strategies. then it offers a detailed review of some of the empirical studies concerning vocabulary memory strategies conducted by scholars based on four research parameters: research approaches, objective, design and data. other studies trying to explore theoretical bases and mechanism explanation are then summarized from the perspective of both cognitive processing and psychological interpretation. it finally intends to point out possible future research orientation: betterment in methodology to carry out empirical studies in the fields related, inviting cross discipline studies to construct a more comprehensive and elaborative theoretical system, and attempting to apply memory strategies in the language learning and teaching. a specific example of keyword memory strategy is also given to illustrate the application of this highlighted strategy in other second language vocabulary learning and teaching, thus arousing researchers interests in studying the effectiveness of the memory strategies to chinese english learners. the ultimate goal of this thesis is to draw a clear picture of this field relating to its past, present and future in order to attract more heed in this area to make memory strategies in vocabulary learning an instrument consciously, properly and efficiently employed to facilitate learning and teaching vocabulary in chinese context.key words: vocabulary acquisition，memory strategy，mnemonics，cognitive mechanism摘要：自二十世纪末以来，词汇学习策略的研究在二语习得中受到越来越多的关注。很多学者在对于学习策略的研究中都提及了记忆策略，但是并未给出明确的定义和分类。在二语词汇习得中，词汇记忆处于核心地位，因此将相应的词汇记忆策略作为专题进行研究就显得尤为重要。本文意在总结十年来国内学者对于词汇记忆策略在中文为母语的条件下的应用、效果及机理研究，并且分析了今后这个专题主要的研究方向，指出了该课题的深入研究将在一定程度上改变传统意义上的英语词汇机械学习和教学方法。关键词：词汇习得，记忆策略，记忆法，认知机理an overview of researches on english (l2) vocabulary memory strategies in china over the last decade (1997-2006)1. introductionin the last 25 years, the field of second language acquisition has seen the reemergence of the interest in one area of language study-vocabulary. a number of specific strategies for learning vocabulary have been identified (nation, 2004:159), concerning both those strategies used to memorize isolated lexical items and those employed to learn new words from context. learners-oriented language teaching and learning has highlighted the importance of lexical memorization, which stands at the center of the whole process of vocabulary acquisition, on the grounds that most of the learners dont have a clue about how to memorize new words, how to consolidate the words they have learned, and how to retain these words as part of their mental lexicon. the embarrassing tip-of-the-tongue cases have cast discouragement and disappointment over many english learners. both the english learners and the researchers are eager to unlock the mystery related to word and memory. researches in this field have turned to psychology for a possible explanation. investigations on the effectiveness of some kind of mnemonic strategy known as keyword method were widely conducted and introduced to esl learners (atkinson & raugh, 1975:126-133), and other strategies believed to facilitate vocabulary memorization were also added to the strategy list. despite all the attentions received and achievements witnessed in the western academic world, the english learners in china dont benefit much from the newly emerging research hotpot. most of them still employ the traditional rote-learning strategy and are tortured by the endless and time-consuming repetition process. the main reason lies in that most chinese english learners dont hold a belief in “strategy”, because those so-called memorization strategies are summarized in different native language contexts, which possibly do not fit in with the chinese english learners. in this sense, it is necessary for chinese sla researchers to conduct specific quantitative and qualitative studies on the vocabulary memory strategies based on specific situations in china.the current situation is that the study of the vocabulary memory strategies accounts for a small proportion in the hundreds of papers on vocabulary acquisition, but the papers of its kind published in the core journals on foreign language studies are of great value and thus worth careful review, for they not only represent the contemporary research interests in this area, but also provide us with the implications of where this field of study will head for.though some researchers distinguish between acquisition and learning (for example, krashen, 1985), it is now accepted that it is problematic to demonstrate whether the process of language knowledge is of the acquired or learnt kind. in this thesis, acquisition and learning will be used interchangeably and the l2 is used to refer to both sl (second language) and fl (foreign language).2. a summary of past researchesin order to get a relatively complete picture of the contemporary situation on the study of vocabulary memory strategies, a wide range of literature review are carried out on cnki database. the information retrieving process includes two stages:stage one: setting key words (vocabulary memorization, memory strategy, etc.) and publishing year (1997-2006), retrieving papers from all the journals subsumed in cnki database.there are hundreds of papers available related to this topic, but most of them are written according to personal experience without scientific support.stage two: narrowing down the scope of retrieving, screening and grouping the relevant papers published in core journals (foreign language teaching and research, foreign language research, foreign language teaching, etc).the general findings are a score of papers or so which deal with vocabulary memory strategies or something related and focus on various topics in the area. (table 1)table 1: paper focuses and amount of related paperspaper focus amount strategy-based studies5learner difference-based studies4targeted language-based studies2theory-based studies8memory-based studies3from the above table, we can see clearly that the majority of studies are empirical studies investigating the effectiveness of one or several vocabulary memory strategies, or theories attempting to explain the mnemonic mechanism as well as the possible cognitive theoretical construct. the rest of the studies account for a smaller proportion, but are of great importance lying in the implications for the further study of this topic.2.1 vocabulary memory strategies it is surprising that in all the papers, the definition and categorization of vocabulary memory strategy cannot be found. there are not many common grounds between different researchers, which always cause confusion among learners. this part will solve the self-being problem, and then list a relatively comprehensive memory strategy refined from the prior strategy researches.2.1.1 describing vocabulary memory strategiesdefining the concept of strategy has already been a tough task, because “the concept of strategy is a somewhat fuzzy one” (rod ellis, 1994:529). after an analysis of various definitions given by different researchers, a general definition of “learning strategy” is presented by ellis: “a strategy consisted of mental or behavioral activity related to some specific stage in the overall process of language acquisition or language use” (1994:529).nation states that “knowing a word involves being able to recognize it when it is heard or when it is seen” (2004:31). thus, the whole learning process should include a full package of lexical knowledge: form, position, function, and meaning, which requires several steps of learning. two chinese scholars zhang wenzhong and wu xudong divide the whole process of vocabulary learning into five stages. these are: 1. attending to individual words; 2. noticing information about the words attended to; 3. processing the noticed information about the individual words; 4. storing in memory the processed lexical information and 5.retrieving lexical information from the memory and put it to us(2003:373-384).memorizing a word involves the third and the fourth stages, paralleling short-term recognition and long-term retention. the relationship between vocabulary learning strategies and vocabulary memory strategies is simply defined as that of whole and part. thus we can settle for a definition of vocabulary memory strategies by borrowing the definition of learning strategies: mental or behavioral activity related to processing and storing lexical information. of course, this definition is open to debate. with further exploration in the field of psychology, we will know more about the internal mnemonic mechanism, and about the correlation between memory and language study. at that time we can put forward a more scientific definition.2.1.2 classifying vocabulary memory strategiesmany papers have categorized memory strategies according to different standards. some researches are conducted to investigate the effectiveness of certain strategy or several strategies based on a theory. the following are the memory strategies identified by chinese researchers in their papers: wang wenyu states in her findings that when memorizing words, chinese learners usually adopt more than one memory strategy. through an empirical study she (1998: 49) summarizes the most often used strategies are: recombination, self-management, word list, repetition, elaboration and contextualization. in another study aiming at the mnemonic strategies applied in learning difficult efl words, more specific strategies are identified: auditory representation, repetition, word list, word formation, contextualization, recombination, key word, elaboration and imagery (l wenpeng, 2000). another strategy mentioned is chunking strategy (song desheng, 2002). these studies, though stating some strategies in vocabulary learning, mix learning strategies with memory strategies. even those directly mentioning memory strategies fail to come up with a comprehensive taxonomy. no wonder in china, we seldom introduce strategies in learning a language, thus learners have little access to the instruction of learning strategies, not to mention specific memory strategies. though caution must be exercised in drawing conclusions from researches that have investigated the relationship between learning strategies and l2 development (ellis, 1994:555), still we have seen from good learners examples that they apply certain strategies consciously or unconsciously in different stages of learning. a clear taxonomy will facilitate learners to make a reasonable choice in different stages of learning.recent research by stoffer (1995, -cited in schmitt, 2001:204-205) shows considerable promise in providing an empirical basis for category assignment. a factor analysis of the 53 items on her vocabulary strategy survey shows they cluster into nine groups. memory strategies are among one of them. omalley (1985) makes a distinction between metacognitive and cognitive strategies. and the strategies listed above by chinese researchers are a mix-up, without clear distinctions. oxford captures and organizes the wide variety of vocabulary learning strategies identified into four categories: memory, cognitive, metacognitive, and social, and “approaches which relate new material to existing knowledge fall into the memory strategies category” (schmitt, 2001:205).schmitt provides a relatively complete list of all memory strategies, with a distinction between memory strategies and cognitive strategies. meanwhile, he enlarges the scope of memory strategies (traditionally known as mnemonics) and embodies more strategies as long as they can function in the stages of memorizing a word. the following is a tentative way to do the taxonomy.vocabulary memory strategies can be divided into: mnemonic and non-mnemonic elaboration techniques. mnemonic strategies and non-mnemonic strategies involving deep semantic processing of target words have been shown to be more effective than those involving only shallow processing, such as oral rote-repetition. mnemonic techniques involve the use of both visual and verbal mental imagery to relate a word to be memorized with some previously learned knowledge. the following table is a better illustration.mnemonicsmemorystrategiesnon-mnemonicsvisualverbal shallow processing orthographical formimagerykeywordsacronymsrhyming groupingrecombinationelaboration chunkingsemantic mapword formationsense relationshiprepetitiondeep processingtable 2: taxonomy of memory strategiesthis is not the only way to categorize all the possible memory strategies. other systems can be designed, for instance, according to the effects of certain strategies, i.e. whether the strategy is used for short term memory or long term retention. and many other issues are still at discussion, because a strategic system should be dynamic rather than stable.2.2 empirical studies researches of last ten years have seen a great leap forward in terms of empirical studies. “sla nowadays has a varied inventory of methodologies with which to deal with questions, although the methodologies are by no means universally endorsed (larsen-freeman & long, 2000: 10).2.2.1 research parameterswe can find researches designed with qualitative or quantitative methodologies, or a combination of both, depending on different objectives of study. we can also find longitudinal approach, which involves observing the development of the linguistic performance, usually the spontaneous speech of one subject over a span of time, and cross-sectional approach, by which the linguistic performance data are usually collected at one session. it is not impossible to combine longitudinal approaches with cross-sectional ones.herbert w. seliger and elana shohamy have raised four parameters for second language research.parameter1: synthetic and analytic approaches to the phenomenaparameter2: heuristic and deductive objectivesparameter3: the degree of control and manipulation of the research contextparameter4: data and data collection (1999: 25-37)for the first parameter, the point at issue here is that research in second language can be carried out from a synthetic/holistic perspective, which emphasizes the interdependence of the parts of the field, or from the analytic/constituent aspect, which emphasizes the role of the constituent parts that make up the whole. the second parameter is about the objectives or the purposes of the research. a heuristic one is data-driven, deriving a description or a hypotheses from a large number of data collected, while a deductive one is hypothesis-driven, making predictions and designing experiments to test the hypothesis and coming up with a theory. all forms of researches imply some kind of control or manipulation of factors in the research context, and the degree of control can be assessed by the following factors: restriction of scope, control of variables, attention to form and researcher subject activity. the last parameter, perhaps the ultimate one to reflect the former three, consists of the manner how the data are collected and analyzed. here a detailed review of the empirical studies designed by chinese researches is given from the above four parameters.2.2.2 specific review17table 3: a review of empirical studiesitemtime and researcherquestion investigatedapproaches objectivedesigndatasynthetic /analyticheuristic /deductiverestriction of scopecontrol variables attention to formresearcher subject activityexplicitnesshighlowhighlow1huang yuanzhen(2001)the relationship between morphological motivation and lexical acquisitionanalyticdeductivehighlowhighlowhigh2wang wenyu(1998)correlation between belief, strategy and english vocabulary retentionanalyticheuristichighlowlowlowhigh3fan linwang qinghua(2002)effectiveness of grouping strategy in lexical learninganalyticheuristichighhighhighlowhigh4l wenpeng(2000)mnemonics for difficult words in an efl situationanalyticheuristichighhighhighlowhigh5wu lilin(2001)learners differences in lexical memorizationanalyticdeductivelowlowlowlowhigh6chenhuazhang yi-fang(2001)a survey of lexical memory strategy by childrenanalyticheuristiclowlowlowlowhigh7zhang bochengwei han(2004)the way of presentation in english lexical memorizationanalyticdeductivehighlowlowlowhigh8song desheng(2002)chunking effect in lexical memorizationanalyticdeductivelowlowhighhighhigh9ke weidong yanping(2001)effect of context on direct learning of l2 vocabularyanalyticheuristichighhighhighlowhigh10lin min(2003)correlation between vocabulary memorization, belief and strategy of chinese non-english major studentsanalyticheuristiclowlowhighlowhigh11zhao qunluo weidong(2005)lexical core sense and polysemius-word acquisitionanalyticdeductivehighlowhighlowhighwhen reviewing others experiments, it is advisable to be objective and follow a standard