The purpose of this study was to explore and compare effects of phonics and multi-media pictorial mnemonics on English vocabulary learning by three junior high school students in resource classroom. The methodology was alternating treatment design of single subject research. The independent variables were phonics and multi-media pictorial mnemonics, whereas dependent variables consisted of English vocabulary learning and retention effects of listening, recognition, spelling, and the whole test. The experimental teaching involved 12 sessions which lasted for 4 weeks. The results of this study indicated that the learning effect was not obvious. However the retention effects of multi-media pictorial mnemonics on listening and recognition were better than those of phonics. Based upon the results of this study, further discussion was addressed and suggestions for classroom teaching as well as future studies were proposed.