Abstract:

Reading skill refers to reading aloud (oral reading) and silent reading. Reading aloud is a traditional language learning method, and is widely used by language learners for a long time. Reading aloud can also help to cultivate readers’ sense of language. However, few college students are observed to spend time reading English words in some universities. Most of them prefer visual repetition to remember new words. In order to examine whether reading aloud is a good way to remember the words or not, the present study carries out a research in the form of questionnaire and experiment among the college students. Through analyzing the results, the writer finds that reading aloud strategy is really of benefit to English learners. Therefore, five suggestions concerning reading aloud are given to help improve their words’ memorization at the end of this study.

Key words: new words; mnemonic technique; reading aloud; empirical research

摘要：

阅读技巧有朗读（口头阅读）和默读。朗读是一种传统的语言学习方法，长久以来被语言学习者广泛使用。它也可以培养读者的语感。但在有些大学校园里，几乎看不到大学生花时间朗读英语单词，大部分学生依然选择反复看的方法来记忆。本文以大学生作为调查对象，采用了问卷和实证调查来证明朗读是否能够成为记忆英语单词的有效途径。通过对结果的分析，作者发现朗读确实有利于提高单词记忆水平。因此在论文结尾，作者给出了五种朗读策略来帮助学生们提高单词记忆水平。

关键词：新词；记忆方法；大声朗读；实证研究

1. Introduction
The form, pronunciation and meaning constituted the three properties of a word, and strong links is to be established when the learner remembers the word. The college syllabus has clear definition on undergraduates’ ability of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation. Reading aloud, however, is not specifically required. Students are seemingly not willing to read words sometimes. This is due to the fact that the learning and teaching strategy of English words have been long neglected. Language researchers and teachers usually put more emphasis on English phonetics and syntax which are considered as the centre of language theory, linguistics and pedagogies. And the role played by words in second language acquisition is underestimated chronically (James Coady & Thomas Hukin, 1997). Many people think that language teachers only need to guide learners how to pronounce a word and how to use a word; vocabulary mnemonic belongs to personal learning skill, requiring strengthened memory. Not until the late 1980s did linguists begin to attach importance to words’ learning and teaching technique.