Comparison Study Of Chinese And American University Students In Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Second Language

This paper investigates the vocabulary learning strategies adopted by 60 Chinese university students when learning English and 60 American university students when learning Chinese. The difference of the vocabulary learning strategies adopted by Chinese students and American students and the deep reasons behind are released through comparison of the investigation results and the interview of the subjects. In addition, case study of the vocabulary learning strategies adopted by two successful Chinese students and two successful American students also releases some common vocabulary learning strategies of those successful learners and offers more inspirational hints to the vocabulary learning and teaching of second language.The key results found through the investigation are as follows:Generally speaking, both Chinese students and American students prefer metacognitive strategy and cognitive strategy to social emotional strategy and resource application strategy. But they have huge difference in the application of self-reflection,vocabulary memorizing, relying on native language, sharing experience with other people, looking for language partners and applying target language resources.The research indicates that studying environment, culture background and language level are three major factors that lead to the difference of the strategies adopted by Chinese students and American students. First, target language environment prompts learners to use resource application strategy and looking-up dictionary strategy better, together with strong sense of self-checking conscious. Secondly, the exploring spirit within the American culture makes learners have better use of metacognitive strategy, more pleasant to share their learning experience, more active to find language partners while the implicit spirit within the Chinese culture makes learners tend to prefer traditional learning by rote method and they have less use of metacognitive strategy and resource application strategy. Last but not least, learners of different language level also have difference in the application of the strategies. Like learners of high language level are more likely to use the resource application strategy;but they usually place less emphasis on note-taking and review while learners of relatively low language level tend to pay more emphasis on note-taking,self-checking and review. But at the same time,they rely on the native language more.The results of the case study show that although there's huge language difference between Chinese and English, those successful vocabulary learners have some common characters. They are both very dedicated to vocabulary study; pay attention to the application of the metacognitive strategy; confirm the active help of language partner; adopt various memorization methods; recognize the significance of huge amount of input to language study and make use of target language resource to help their vocabulary learning.