A Study On English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Of Chinese Adult Learners

Vocabulary learning is central to language acquisition since it is the fundamental element of every aspect of the target language acquisition. Learners' vocabulary learning strategies refer to specific approaches, methods, behaviors, steps, or techniques that the learners (often intentionally) use to improve their progress in acquiring the target language.Research on learning strategies commenced in the early 1970s. Most of the early studies in this aspect focused on the approaches and actions/techniques that the "good"' language learners used to improve their progress in developing the second language skills. The early studies revealed that learning styles, personality-related variables and demographic factors would influence the learners' learning strategies. A variety of vocabulary learning strategies were observed, analyzed and classified. The classification of Oxford and that of O'Malley & Chamot were generally accepted and highly evaluated. Oxford drew a distinction between the direct and indirect strategies. The former group was composed of memory strategies, cognitive strategies and compensation strategies. The latter group included meta-cognitive strategies, affective strategies and social strategies. Another contribution of Oxford in this field was her SILL (Strategy Inventory for Language Learning) which gave detailed descriptions of the learning strategies. In O'Malley and Chamot's classification, meta-cognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies constituted the framework. Both of these two classifications were valid and comprehensive. Speaking of the research methods of vocabulary learning strategies, oral interviews, written questionnaires, observations, verbal reports, diaries, dialogue journals and recollective studies were proved to be scientific and appropriate methods.Although there are millions of English learners in China, a little research on English vocabulary learning has been conducted. Within the research, the researchers pay much more attention to English learning strategies rather than English vocabulary learning strategies, and the focus of the research is often on English teaching rather than on English learning, for example, Weng Qiufang (1995) conducts a research on English learning strategies which studies the influence of English learning strategies on English learning results. However, in herresearch, there is only a small part that touches upon English vocabulary learning strategies. Yao Meilin (2000), in his dissertation entitled "The trend of current teaching research on foreign language vocabulary learning strategies", conducts a study on English vocabulary learning strategies, but the research focuses on English teaching rather than English learning, and it does not involve specific English vocabulary learning strategies. This dissertation focuses on English vocabulary learning strategies and aims to reveal the English vocabulary learning strategies used by Chinese adult learners and study the relationship between English vocabulary learning strategies and English learning results of Chinese adult learners.The purpose of this paper is to investigate the existing status of Chinese adults' vocabulary learning strategies and attempt to figure out the most efficient strategies for them. The research instruments used in this paper are questionnaires, think-aloud method, observations, interviews and tests. The questionnaires are adapted according to Schmitt's taxonomy (1997) and O'Malley and Chamot's classification with some refinements based on Chinese adult learners' learning characteristics and delivered to 200 adult English learners studying in Shandong Provincial Foreign Languages Training Center. With the statistical software SPSS, I analyzed the research results and obtairffthe following conclusions: 1) For most of the Chinese learners, vocabulary acquisition is not a natural process. 2) English learners adopt a large number of learning strategies in coping with vocabulary, and most of these strategies significantly correlated with the learners' vocabulary proficiency. 3) Great differences lie in the vocabulary learning strategies used by the good and poor learners respectively. 4) Rote or simple rehearsal is still the mainly used vocabulary learning strategy. 5) Learners pay insufficient attention to the correlation between the newly acquired vocabulary and the words they've mastered. 6) Meta-cognitive and social/affective strategies are vital but rarely applied in real situations.At the end of the dissertation, the author gives some suggestions to the Chinese adult English learners on how to use and achieve English vocabulary learning strategies and the author also obtainï¿¡?& some implications to facilitate our English teaching in the light of the research results.