Effects of the Word Presentation Modes on English Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary is an essential part of every language not only foreign language. The way teachers teach new vocabulary is vocabulary presentation mode, which influence students’ vocabulary retention greatly. According to the cognitive psychology, the way to understand new information varies with the presentation modes of information, which means only with the appropriate presentation modes, the vocabulary acquisition can be facilitated. There are three different presentation modes as follows: vocabulary list, picture mode and incidental context. However, higher rate of forgetting and a single method exist among the senior high students nationwide. Therefore, it is necessary to explore some effective presentation modes to improve senior high school students’ vocabulary retention effect. This paper aims to elaborate the effects of different vocabulary presentation modes on students’ foreign vocabulary acquisition and retention. This will help students to be familiar with the vocabulary presentation modes so that they can learn the new words efficiently. Some former researchers indicated that there were no significant difference between the three modes on students’ vocabulary acquisition and short-term recall, while the three modes affected students’ long-term vocabulary retention significantly. Altogether, picture mode has great influence on vocabulary recall, but there is no significant difference between vocabulary list and accidental context. Reasons for the results were explained from the perspectives of modal theory. Finally, implications for foreign vocabulary teaching will be discussed.