XIV Международный конкурс научно-исследовательских и творческих работ учащихся

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Эффективные способы запоминания английских слов

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Линевич О.С. 1

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1МБОУ "Лицей №2"

Королёва Н.М. 1

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1МБОУ "Лицей №2"

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Introduction

1.1 Actuality

I am the pupil of the tenth form and next year I am going to have the exam in English. Of course, I have to begin my preparation beforehand. Having done different tasks in reading, listening, speaking and writing, I found out that my troubles were connected with lack of the vocabulary. Moreover, next year there will be some changes in the structure of the Federal State Exam. So, I have faced some questions with the effective ways of learning words for a short period of time.

1.2 Hypothesis

There are different ways of memorizing the words of effective preparing for the exam.

1.3 The aim of the work

The aim of the work – to find different effective ways of memorizing the English words and widen the vocabulary in short time.

In order to make deep research I have put the following tasks:

To improve my English.

To classify effective ways of learning the words according to the age of pupils. and psychological types of memory.

To improve my computer skills.

To get acquaintance with the foreign system of testing of knowing English.

The object of the work is the English language.

The subject of the work is the English words.

Main part

2.1 Psychological aspect

Before my research I studied literature and psychology by Vygotsky A.S., Pavlov I., Erikson E., Davydov V.V., Kraynova Y.N. in order to find out what types of memory people have and what influences its effective functioning. The processes of memorizing, preserving and reproducing person's experience is called memory.Psychologists usually divide memory into following types:

Motor memory is based on the memorizing and making movements (riding a bike, swimming, playing basketball, playing tennis, etc.) This kind of memory dominates labour skills and any moving actions.

Emotional memory is a memory of feelings and emotions which a person has ever had in his life (a memory of fear, sorrow and shame).

Imaginative memory is a memory of images, representations, sounds, smells and tastes. Many researchers divide imaginative memory into:

Visual (the image of a relative, native house)

Auditory (favourite song, mother’s voice)

Tactical (soft wool favourite pet)

Olfactory (the smell of favourite perfume and flowers)

Taste (the taste of favourite drink, sweets, lemon acid)

Word-logical memory is a memory of ideas, thoughts and conclusions. It is also called significant as it keeps information in the form of word structures and numerals. We remind and produce thoughts while thinking, we remember the content of the book which we have read, our talk with friends. Our thoughts do not exist without the language so this memory is not only called logical. The main role is given to the second signal system. That is why this kind of memory is specific for a human being.

2.2 Different views of knowing English

According to the International System of measuring of knowing English there are some levels:

A — (Basic User):

A1 — (Survival Level — Beginner и Elementary)

A2 — (Waystage — Pre-Intermediate)

B — (Independent User):

B1 — (Threshold — Intermediate)

B2 — (Vantage — Upper-Intermediate)

C — (Proficient User):

C1 — (Effective Operational Proficiency — Advanced)

C2 — (Mastery — Proficiency)

2.3 Classification of ways of learning English words

According to psychological particular qualities each person chooses his/her own ways of learning English words. The can be the following:

Visual:

- Flash-cards. You take a card and divide it into left and right sides (English and Russian). You use this card and keep it in front of you the whole day looking at it from time to time trying to memorize the words.

- Stickers on the subjects around you, stickers with phrasal words and idioms.

Writing:

- dictation;

- listening and drawing (for children);

- «Lace» («Кружево»). It is a way of activation of the vocabulary together with widening topics. For example:

My hobby

My family

Parents

Travelling

My Working Day

You start speaking about yourself. You certainly mention information about your parents, their job, appearance. Don't forget to say how you spend your free time. While speaking about your working day you can describe your school and leisure activities etc.

make as many words as possible for the period of ten minutes;

«The Field of Wonders»;

transcription – word;

Oral methods:

songs and poems

«Snowball». It is a way of enlarging your vocabulary. This method can be trained in groups. For example: you speak about hobbies. The first pupil gives a sentence on this topic, the second one should repeat the first sentence and add his/her own etc. The last pupil should repeat the whole story.

Associative way is usually used by the pupils when the words have similar pronunciation or spelling in Russian and English.

For example:

When we learn preposition the best way to remember the preposition of direction is to use an association with Russian идти куда? – туда. We use the preposition to.

Cousin – кузинаиликузен

Daughter – дочь

Autumn – осень

Sunflower – похож на солнце

Geographical – географический

Office – офис

But be attentive, in Russian and English there are words, the external similarity of which is great, but the meanings of these lexical units are different from each other.

Accurately – точно (а не аккуратно), complexion – цвет лица (а не комплекция), magazine – журнал (а не магазин), intelligent – умный (а не интеллигентный).

5) Playing methods: if you name fruits the children imitate its collecting from brunches, if you name vegetables the children imitate picking them up. Another game can be connected with eatable and uneatable food (eatable – the children move the hands to themselves, uneatable – the children move the hands from themselves).

6) Reading.

The traditional way of learning words is reading both paper or e-books. While doing it it’s better to take a copybook and write down the unknown words, idioms, proverbs, sayings and try to use them in your everyday speech.

2.4 Crazy English Research

Some people have different problems with English. They sometimes see illogical formation of words. One of the English linguist Richard Lederer found many interesting things in his native language. You can see some examples of so-called «Crazy English».

Eggplant (баклажан) does not have anything in common with the egg, there is no ham in hamburger and pineapple is connected neither with pine nor with apple at all. English muffins were first cooked not in England and French fries – not in France. Hot dogs (sausages baked in dough) can be cold. Another crazy case is that school blackboards are of different colors in modern schools. Blackberries are green in reality but red and black only in the end. You cannot find grapes in grapefruit and there is no room in mushroom. English people call guinea pig but it does not mean that this pig is from Guinea. When we speak about details of our house we mention bathrooms but some of them have a shower instead of a bath.

Why is it so that when we transport something by car, it's called a shipment, but when we transport something by ship, it's called cargo?

Why is the monarchy in Great Britain called kingdom if it is ruled both by kings and queens?

From grammatically point of view some similar words should have similar plural forms but tooth – teeth forms the plural not like booth – beeth and if the pronoun soft has the antonym hard why the adverb softly does not coincide with the adverb hardly.

Practical part

The Research of the Most Effective Ways of Learning English Words among Teenagers.

The research was held on the base of the 10^th Grade, Lyceum №2.

Statistic data of participants.

Total: 29 pupils

The first task of this work was to find out the psychological particular features of memory of both boys and girls which help them to memorize different information effectively.

I prepared a questionnaire form which consisted of two parts. The first part examined the types of memory, such as:

Visual

Auditory

Motor

Combined

All tested pupils were to find out which type was dominating for them. The types of memory were marked according to the following scheme:

The total data according to age and gender groups are presented in the table (see application №1).

What are the most dominating types of memory among teenagers?

In the girls group the most effective type is visual. It can be explained by the fact that girls are naturally more sensitive and imaginative. As a rule, the girls are more accurate and perfect in studying. They are more responsible because they have the fear of getting a bad mark more often than the boys.

The boys showed motor type as a dominating type because they usually learn particular material which is important for them at the moment.

The second part of research was devoted to different ways and methods of learning English words. The pupils were suggested the list of the most popular and effective ways. They were asked to choose the ones particular for them but if they had a new unusual way of learning, they should point it at the end of the table.

The Most Popular and Effective Ways of Learning English Words:

The results of the survey showed a vast range of ways that teenagers use in their learning and memorizing words (see application 2).

The girls pointed the following points: flash cards, stickers, dictations, associations. The most popular among them is associations. The variety of ways among the girls showed that they are more creative and imaginative.

The ways dominating among the boys were flash cards, dictations and making new words. We can see that motor type of memory is specific for boys.

Some pupils pointed their own method, such as computer games in English.

I would like to tell you about one more practical experiment connected with memorizing English words. Here it is.

My grandmother Vera studied German at school. When I started learning English she also wanted to do it. As she mostly spends her time in the kitchen at home, we decided to start from this place and learn the words on the topic «My House». First, I prepared stickers with the names of kitchen furniture and fixed them around the kitchen: window, door, wall, gas stove, sink, refrigerator, table, chair etc. I pronounced all the words and asked my granny to repeat after me. Then she pointed to the subjects herself. She didn`t have to spend special time for memorizing words, she simply did the chores or cooking, looking at these stickers from time to time.

Several days later we learnt prepositions of place and adjectives, such as: tasty, comfortable, small, big, high, low, salty, sweet etc. It took seven days to see the results of our experiment. Of course, it was an exciting, cheerful and useful work. Nowadays my younger brother began to learn English and my granny helps him memorize English words. To my mind, it`s cool!

I didn`t stop my research. This year I am going to have my final Federal State Exam in English. Of course, I know it won`t be easy to pass it because I realize that I should be well-prepared. I have been training the forms of testing, such as: listening, reading, writing and speaking for several years and came to the conclusion that my good results fully depend on the number of English words I would learn. Otherwise, it would be very difficult to understand the text, make comparisons, determine the principle facts and find the necessary details for the right answer. Lack of the vocabulary leads to the difficulty in expressing my opinion in writing and speaking.

Thus, I suggested my classmate Lena to make another experiment. At school we were given additional holidays because of the COVID-19 pandemic and I would like to use it effectively. We pointed several effective for us ways of memorizing the English words and put the task to learn as many words as we could during a week period.

We chose the following ways:

Flash cards.

Make a word.

Reading.

Stickers.

One week later we compared our results (see application 3).

The results of the experiment show that all ways of memorizing the words are acceptable and useful for us. The easiest way was flash cards, the most difficult -stickers, because there are no visual objects with the meaning of some verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

The second task (make a word for ten minutes) gave the following results. We took the word discovery and made different words, including prepositions, articles, verbs of different forms etc.

We may come to the conclusion that such way helps to systemize the word-formation and helps us to find the necessary word in writing and speaking very fast.

Conclusion

Learning English is a process which takes a lot of time and patience. School-leavers need help to prepare for their final exams and pass them successfully. This problem remains actual up to nowadays. Every pupil faces it every year and finds the most effective ways of fast memorizing English words of their own. From psychological point of view schoolchildren are very emotional and ready for something new and creative. So it is not difficult for them to find the way out. At the same time traditional methods and ways give a good result.

4.1 The results of the research

Summing up the previous research we may come to the following conclusions:

The dominating ways of learning English words are associations, dictations and flash-cards.

Teenagers of different age and gender groups have different ways of learning English words. The most specific for girls are ways connected with visual type of memory, while for boys - with motor type.

In order to remember as much as possible it is necessary to listen, read and speak English constantly for a short period of time (5-10 minutes a day). Training gives mastery.

The more words we know, the richer the speech is. The richer the vocabulary is the higher level of knowing English you can reach. It`s a progress, isn`t it?

4.2 Practical value of the work

Thus, the hypothesis that there are different ways of memorizing the words of effective preparing for the exam is proved and evident.

Sources (Literature and E-Sources)

Афанасьева О.В., Михеева И.В., Баранова К.М. «Английский язык. Базовый уровень. 10 класс». - М.: Дрофа, 2014.

Афанасьева О.В., Михеева И.В., Баранова К.М. – 3-е изд., стереотип «Английский язык. Базовый уровень. 11 класс». - М.: Дрофа, 2016.

Выготский А.С. «Проблемы психологического развития ребёнка». Избранные произведения советского психолога. М. 1983.

Давыдов В.В. «Лекции педагогической психологии». Издательство «Академия» 2006г.

Крайг Г., Бокум Д. «Психология развития». 9 изд. СПб. 2005 г. (серия «Мастера психологии»)

Крайнова Ю.Н. «Адаптация школьников к обучению в среднем звене, как психологическая проблема» (практическая психология и логопедия) 2009 г. - №1

Эльконин Д.Б. «Детская психология». Издательство «Академия» 2006 г.

https://impsi.ru/general-psychology/pamyat-obshhaya-harakteristika-vidy-protsessy-i-mehanizmy/

Application

Application №1

Application №2

Application №3

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