A Study On College Students English Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Vocabulary learning strategy is a hot issue in the study of SLA, into which a lot of researches have been made abroad and in China. The researches abroad center around the classification of the vocabulary learning strategies or the description of strategy or strategies of particular groups of learners and some researches go to the theoretical framework for evaluation and training.The last decade has witnessed the development in broadth and depth in the research of this domain in China. These studies provide the insight into the general characteristic of the strategy usage of the Chinese students, which have greatly enriched the understanding of the vocabulary learning process of the Chinese students.The present research attempts to explore the overall pattern of English vocabulary learning strategies used by some Chinese college students. Besides it, the employment of specific memorization strategies, and both similarities and differences in English vocabulary learning strategies use between students of arts and students of non-arts are also explored in this thesis.A questionnaire, adapted from Gu and Johnson (1996), is administered to 118 college students from four universities. Their English vocabulary learning strategies are investigated at metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective levels. By using SPSS, the analyses of the data reveal:1. Generally speaking, the investigated students employ a variety of vocabulary learning strategies at metacognitive, cognitive and social/affective levels. The frequency of the three broad categories of vocabulary learning strategies is: cognitive strategy > metacognitive strategy > social/affective strategy.2. Among all memorization strategies, repetition strategy ranks highest. Other commonly used memorization strategies include association, contextualization and word formation. The infrequently used memorization strategies include grouping and key word.3. Students of arts and students of non-arts use many similar vocabulary learningstrategies. However, there exist some significant differences in using some metacognitive and cognitive vocabulary learning strategies in their learning process.This thesis analyzes these findings respectively, and suggests some pedagogical implications of the research.