The Study Of English Vocabulary Learning Strategies In Vocational Schools

Vocabulary is the building material of language and the "cell" of the culture carried by language.In the past 20 years,vocabulary learning strategies have gained increasing popularity among researchers and teachers.A large amount of research in the area of vocabulary has been done and some significant achievements have already been obtained.Some researchers try to identify effective vocabulary strategies,and others atttempt to describe the vocabulary strategies by a peculiar group of learners.However,strategies used by vocational school students are seldom studied.It is hypothesized that students in vocational schools may differ from those in universities or other types of schools in that they may have different learning beliefs and strategies in vocabulary learning. Therefore,the present study aimed at making an investigation of vocabulary learning strategies used by vocational school students in Chinese context,and providing some insights into vocabulary teaching and learning in vocational schools,and promote the awareness of both strategy using and training.The study is developed from O' Malley and Chamot framework of learning strategies,in which metacognitive strategies,cognitive strategies, social/affective strategies are included.The present study attempts to explore various kinds of vocabulary learning beliefs and strategies possessed by vocational school students and to investigate the different vocabulary learning strategies used by efficient learners and less efficient learners.The relationship between vocabulary learning strategies and vocabulary size are displayed as well. This paper examines 104 students from Xiangtan tobacco school,through one questionnaire survey and one vocabulary size test and interview.The result of the survey is putted into computer and SPSS13.0.Statistical analysis is used to analyze them.The major findings are concluded as follows:1) Overall,vocational schools students emphasize the belief that vocabulary should be learned and applied,though they also tend to agree that words can be memorized.2) Vocational school students show a general tendency toward employed various learning strategies at metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies in their vocabulary learning process.Among metacognitive strategies,the students tends to use Selective Attention most frequently.The rank order of the frequently used strategies in the dimension of cognitive strategies is arranged as follows:Rote-memorization＞Note-taking＞Dictionary＞Translation＞Elaboration＞Contextulization＞Guessing strategies＞Using＞Grouping. As for social/affective strategies,the students prefer to use Anxiety evaluation more often.3) There is significant difference in using vocabulary learning strategies between efficient learners and inefficient learners.Generally speaking,the efficient learners used vocabulary learning strategies significantly more often than less efficient learners.4) Most vocabulary learning strategies tum out to be positively correlated with the vocabulary size and Guessing strategies prove to be the most effective way,whereas Translation is found to be negatively related to vocabulary size.The implications can be drawn from this study that by understanding students' vocabulary learning characteristic,English teachers should put more emphasis on strategy training and learner training should be an inevitable part of second language education.