English Word Association and Its Enlightenment in Junior English Vocabulary Teaching Abstract How to learn English well has always been a hot issue and even a complication in our society. Vocabulary is of great importance in English learning, especially for English as Foreign Language learners (hereinafter as EFL). Since acquiring more English words accurately is not easy for English learners, word association is gradually recommended to improve words memory and understanding. In the author’s opinion, the disparity of different students’ English level starts at the beginning of junior English learning. However, there are few researches focus on the word association in junior high school, even if numerous studies about word association strategies have been done. This thesis aims to explore word association and its enlightenment in junior English vocabulary teaching. After a thorough literature review, the author collects information of word association and conducts some analyses accordingly. And based on the background and information from some literature, the author made an experiment for four weeks as the following questions:46780

(1) Can teaching by the means of word association help junior students to build correct cognitive structure, guide them to analyze and conclude the rules of vocabulary?

(2) Can teaching by the means of word association help junior students to enlarge their vocabulary?

(3) Can the aims of increasing students’ interests in English vocabulary learning and enriching vocabulary teaching in junior English classes be achieved with the help of the means of word association in vocabulary teaching?

In this experiment, 67 students of two classes in An Jilu Experimental School are chosen to be the participants, and their English teacher is the practitioner. They are pided into experimental group (class 3) and control group (class 2). Before the experiment, the pretest was made with questionnaire, which indicated the basic information of students’ vocabulary learning and their understanding of word association. During the process, students in experimental group is taught new English words by the means of word association, but students in control group is taught by the traditional teaching way. And after the experiment, according to the data and statistics collected from questionnaires and tests, it presented that students in experimental group made greater progress in English vocabulary learning than students in control group. To sum up, it proved the three questions, which means it is possible that junior English vocabulary teaching by means of word association may help students’ English vocabulary learning.

Key words: word association; Junior English; vocabulary teaching

摘要如何学好英语一直是一个为社会所热议且复杂的问题。在英语学习中，词汇学习非常重要，尤其是对把英语作为外语的学习者（以下简称EFL）。由于准确得吸收掌握更多的英语单词对于英语学习者来说并不容易，词汇联想作为提高单词记忆和理解的策略和方法逐渐被推崇。在笔者看来，从初中开始，很多学生的英语水平开始拉大。也是因为从初中开始，对于学生英语词汇要求和难度有所增加，真正的英语学习是从初中正式拉开序幕。然而，虽然目前有关英语词汇联想对于教学的研究不少，但是针对初中英语教学的词汇联想并不多。本文旨在探讨词汇联想及其对初中英语词汇教学的启示。通过对文献的查阅和整理后，笔者对收集到的有关词汇联想的信息进行了一些相应的分析。基于这一背景以及相关研究的指引下，笔者针对以下几个问题在四周时间内完成一个实验：

（1）通过词汇联想的词汇教学是否可以帮助初中学生建立正确的认知结构，引导他们分析和总结英语词汇的规则，从而更好得记忆单词？

（2）通过词汇联想的词汇教学是否可以帮助初中学生扩大他们的英语词汇量？