A Study of Memory Strategies for English Vocabulary

Introduction Vocabulary is the basic element of a language. As “a good command of vocabulary is indispensible in every stage of English language” (Li, 2005:168), memorizing vocabulary is very important for English learning. Especially in China nowadays, a study of memory strategies for English vocabulary is very necessary to improve college students’ English learning. Reasons are as follows. Firstly, as to the requirement from college, college students are required to master a large size of vocabulary. According to the policy formulated by the ministry of education in China, to non-English major students, the outline of CET-4 and CET-6 requires them to master 4,500 to 5,500 words; while to English major students, the outline of TEM-4 and TEM-8 requires them to master 5,500 to 12,000 words. They are facing such a great task so they are the objective to study in this paper. Secondly, as to the students themselves, the memorizing ways of Chinese college students need to be improved. In my survey on the Internet, 100 college students from different grades and majors had finished my questionnaire. First, vocabulary size is really a big problem for them. 94% of them deeply agree that vocabulary size affects English study, and 75% of them admit that they are facing difficulties in English mostly because of vocabulary. They need to use strategies to solve this problem. Second, their ways to memorize words are not effective enough. When memorizing words, 65% of them feel boring. Moreover, more than half of them still memorize words by rote. Although they believe that using proper ways is needed, only 29% of them do so and only 17% of them feel effective. They need to learn more useful memory skills. Third, they are hoping to learn better methods to make great progress. 85% of the students are willing to learn new memory technique meanwhile 69% of them agree that our brain potential is infinite. Thirdly, as to the former studies of other scholars, on one hand,