A Cross-sectional Study Of English Vocabulary Learning Strategies

This thesis presents a cross-sectional study of vocabulary learning strategy used by English majors in four grades. The subjects are the 228 undergraduates in four grades, studying in English Education Department of College of Foreign Languages, Jinggangshan University in Jiangxi. The instruments employed in the present study include a vocabulary test and a vocabulary learning strategies questionnaire. The thesis aims at finding the change of preference for vocabulary learning strategy used by English majors across four grade levels, exploring the developmental pattern of vocabulary learning strategies, revealing the significant differences in strategy use between the successful students and less successful students and analyzing the correlation between vocabulary learning strategies and vocabulary test achievements.Based on the analysis of collected data, the major findings are listed as follows:1) There is a change of preference for vocabulary learning strategies across four grade levels. The students in Grade Three and Grade Four use more strategies than those in Grade One and Grade Two. Moreover, the vocabulary learning strategy use involves deeper mental processing when the students progress academically.2) Most vocabulary learning strategies show no significant difference across four grade levels except for extended dictionary strategies, oral repetition, visual repetition, association and visual encoding.3) The strategies which process the information of the words more deeply such as encoding and activation strategies show a trend of increase. Rehearsal strategies display a trend of decrease. Guessing, dictionary, note-taking strategies show no obvious trend of change across the four grade levels.4) In general, the successful students adopt most vocabulary learning strategies more frequently than less successful students. Successful students prefer those strategies involving a deep level of processing compared with less successful students. In the first grade, little significant difference exists between successful and less successful students. In the second grade, the two groups show significant differences in 6 strategies. But in the third and fourth grade, no significant difference exists between the two groups. 5) Of all the vocabulary learning strategies, 5 strategies are positively correlated with the vocabulary test achievement. 3 strategies are negatively correlated with the vocabulary test achievement.Lastly, the limitations of the study are mentioned and some suggestions on future relevant researches are made. In addition, the pedagogical implications of the research are proposed.