The Impact Of Strategy Training On English Vocabulary Learning

In recent years, the strategies that language learners use have been the focus of researches. In 1975, J. Rubin issued "What the 'good language learner' can teach us" in TESOL Quarterly, which proposed some general characteristics of good language learners in psychology and learning. It marked the beginning of researches on learning strategies. In 1990s, O'Malley and Chamot (1990), Oxford (1990) and Wenden (1991) published their monographs on learning strategies, in which the definition and classification of strategies were put forward as well as strategy training in a systematical way. Thus, "strategy training" became the new focus of researches. Strategy training refers to training learning strategies used by language learners. Though language learning is influenced by lots of factors, such as age, aptitude, personality, learning motivation, learning attitude and so on, it can still be improved by the way of strategy training.Among all the language skills, vocabulary strategy training attracts many researchers' attention. Some studies indicate that strategy training has a positive impact on language learners when it is integrated with vocabulary learning. There are many researches in this aspect, for instance, Gu & Johnson (1996), Wang Wenyu (1998), Fan Lin & Wang Qinghua (2001). However, these researches focused on all kinds of vocabulary learning strategies. This study was designed to center on two vocabulary learning strategies: guessing in context and associating. Based on O'Malley and Chamot's definition and classification of learning strategies, the experiment chooses 80 freshmen in Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications as the subjects. After the two-month strategy training, the data are collected and analyzed with the use of SPSS. The following questions are answered:(1) What's the impact of the learning strategy training on the learners' vocabulary learning?(2) What's the impact of the strategy training on the students' beliefs on vocabulary learning?(3) What's the impact of strategy training on the students' use of the vocabulary learning strategies?(4) What are the shortcomings of the experiment? How to improve them?(5) What is the significance of the experiment to the teaching in the future?The results show that strategy training has a positive impact on vocabulary learning and strategy use whereas has no significant impact on beliefs of vocabulary learning. The study also indicates that strategy training should be integrated with classroom instruction in order to improve the efficiency of vocabulary learning. ?...