| As we enter the 21st century, acquisition of vocabulary has assumed a more important role, and as some would argue, the central role in learning a second language (Lewis, 1993). What many language teachers might have intuitively known for a long time, that a solid vocabulary is necessary in every stage of language learning, is now being openly stated by some second language acquisition (SLA) researchers. The following quotations illustrate this:No matter how well the student learns grammar, no matter how successfully the sounds of L2 are mastered, without words to express a wider range of meanings, communication in an L2 just cannot happen in any meaningful way. (McCarthy, 1990).Knowing words is the key to understanding and being understood. The bulk of learning a new language consists of learning new words. Grammatical knowledge does not make for great proficiency in a language. (Vermeer, 1992: 147)With this shift in emphasis, the classroom teacher is faced with the challenge of how best to help students store and retrieve words in the target language. This thesis will look at what various theories have to say about vocabulary size, text coverage and vocabulary acquisition strategies. It will focus especially on three issues of key importance for vocabulary acquisition: (1) a compilation of the strategy taxonomy; (2) a survey carried out in Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE) and (3) a thorough discussion of the survey.This thesis comprises 5 chapters. Chapter 1 provides some background information on vocabulary acquisition, namely a investigation on vocabulary size and text coverage. Chapter 2 offers a general research review of a vocabulary acquisition strategy...
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