On Forgetting Phenomenon in English Vocabulary Memorizing of Vocational College Students in Leshan City, Sichuan, China

Abstract

Memory plays a vital role in the process of English vocabulary memorizing. Nevertheless, vocational college students often find it hard to retain their memories over long periods of time despite having tried many ways to enhance their memories. In fact, English vocabulary memorizing has become a serious problem for most vocational college students in China for lack of efficient methods and consciousness of overcoming forgetting phenomenon. Under the guidance of psychological experiments and theories of forgetting, this paper presents an analysis of the factors worsening forgetting phenomenon in English vocabulary memorizing from the aspects of both students and teachers, based on a survey carried out in Leshan Vocational and Technical College. Finally, this paper puts forward some solutions aiming to decrease the students' English vocabulary forgetting rate and improve their efficiency of memorizing English vocabulary. Memory According to Wikipedia, " In psychology, memory is the process in which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved " . Further, memory is divided into three basic stages: memorization, retention, recognition and recall. Basically, memorization, referring to encoding of information, is the first stage. It can be further divided into intentional memorization, unintentional memorization, meaningful memorization, as well as mechanical memorization. According to the previous study, vocational college students in China often use intentional and mechanical memorization methods to memorize English vocabulary. The second memory stage is retention, which is not only a further enhancing of memorization, but also an important guarantee of the third stage. But this stage is a dynamic change process as time goes by, and the change is forgetting. According to YAN Guo-cai (1998), " In fact, memory retention and forgetting are complementary to each other, and sometimes forgetting is not a bad thing. The dialectical relationship between them is that the less you can keep in mind, the more you will forget " (p. 70). Recognition and recall is the third memory stage, which is a retrieval process of information that has been stored according to the view of information processing theory. But sometimes, retrieval of information may be effortless for different reasons. According to XU Jian-qi (2013), " When the content of memory cannot or ZHOU Ye, lecturer, master, School of Foreign Language, Leshan Normal University.