An Investigation Of Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used By English Major Students

Vocabulary learning is one of the most important components in language acquisition. Yet, the studies of vocabulary learning and vocabulary learning strategies have long been neglected until the 1970s. Most of the previous research in this field focused on the techniques, strategies or behaviors that the learners used to improve their progress in acquiring the target language. There has only been limited research focusing on this specific topic, especially for the English major students, though more and more articles about the vocabulary learning strategies have been published in resent years.This study is intended to probe into English majors' use of vocabulary learning strategies. 105 subjects were selected from the second-year English majors in Jiangxi Normal University. A questionnaire adapted from Gu & Johnson's (1996) and a vocabulary size test were delivered to the participants. The data collected from the two instruments had been processed in computer by using SPSS 11.5 for Windows in order to examine the differences between the vocabulary learning strategies used by successful students and less successful ones. A comparison of vocabulary learning strategies was conducted through Independent-Samples T-Test. The study revealed the following findings:First, a general statistical description showed that students tended to agree with the belief that vocabulary should be learned by use. The frequently adopted strategies are: two metacognitive strategies, three dictionary strategies, two contextual guessing strategies, two note-taking strategies, while encoding strategies and activation strategies are the least commonly used ones.Second, the correlation analysis revealed that "the words should be memorized", "the use of word lists", "visual repetition" were negatively correlated with their vocabulary learning achievements. Of all the other variables, the use beliefs, selective attention, self-initiation, contextual guessing, dictionary strategies, note-taking strategies and activation strategies were positively correlated with the dependent variables. There is no significant correlation between oral repetition, association, visual encoding, semantic encoding, contextual encoding and vocabulary learning achievement.Third, significant differences did exist in the employment of vocabulary learning strategies between successful and unsuccessful learners. Successful learners more frequently used contextual guessing strategies, note-taking strategies and activation strategies, while the unsuccessful learners were found to use the same strategies at a lower frequency. Both successful learners and unsuccessful learners tended to use dictionary strategies frequently, but seldom used encoding strategies. And unsuccessful learners used visual repetition strategies more than the successful learners did.The findings of this study can suggest some implications for English vocabulary teaching and learning. Students should take initiative and use a variety of strategies in their English vocabulary learning process. They should also learn how to overcome the difficulties they meet in using these strategies in order to form a good vocabulary learning habit. Teachers should provide more systematic guidance on vocabulary learning for the students' use of different kinds of vocabulary learning strategies in order to encourage and cultivate the students to be autonomous learners.Though this study has discovered some general tendency in English major students' use of vocabulary strategies, it still has some limitations for future improvement. It is hoped that the implications of the study can be beneficial for both learners and teachers in the process of their English learning and teaching.