A Study Of College Students' Vocabulary Proficiency And Vocabulary Strategic Learning

Of all the levels of language, words are most fundamental to us. Without sufficient lexical knowledge, it is hard for learners to develop the five skills of English listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating. Moreover, with the deepening and systemization of vocabulary researches during recent decades, vocabulary draws an increasing attention from applied linguistics. However, while the importance of vocabulary has been universally acknowledged, it is a biggest obstacle in language learning. Learners may fail in understanding because of too many unknown words in the text or they are unable to express themselves correctly or clearly in English due to insufficient lexical knowledge. So it is urgent to know how to make learners more efficient and effective in vocabulary learning.The previous studies of strategic learning were focused on the specific strategies used by learners so as to find out what strategies are more effective. However, there are three problems existing in these studies:first, no agreement has been achieved on the defining criteria of strategies; secondly, most studies took the quantity or frequency of strategies as the criterion of judging strategy capacity rather than the quality; thirdly, strategy use is a complex process, including a number of factors and sub-processes. That can explain why these studies could not reach an agreed conclusion on what strategies are more effective. To avoid the problems mentioned above, this thesis will introduce a wider concept---vocabulary strategic learning.Under such background, this thesis takes 112 sophomores from Northwest Politics and Law University, majoring in International Trade and Economics as its subjects. With the instruments of three vocabulary tests and one self-regulatory capacity questionnaire, it tries to investigate their English vocabulary proficiency and vocabulary strategic learning. After the collected data is analyzed by SPSS, it draws the following conclusions:first, their receptive vocabulary is 3147, controlled-productive vocabulary is 1142, and the proportion of words beyond basic 2000 is 6.19%. This outcome does not meet the basic requirement of College English Curriculum, and especially controlled-productive vocabulary stays at the high school phase; secondly, their overall self-regulatory capacity lies at a medium level, and among the five types of action control strategies only environment control reaches a high level; thirdly, compared to the other four types of action control strategies, commitment control is more closely correlated to different aspects of vocabulary proficiency; finally, self-regulatory capacity is significantly correlated to receptive and free productive use of vocabulary, but insignificantly to controlled productive vocabulary proficiency.Based on the analysis on these conclusions, this thesis further elicits some implications for current vocabulary teaching and learning. First, pay more attention to the productive use of vocabulary. The language learning environment in China and the nature of classroom teaching do not provide students with sufficient contexts to feel language, nor force them to use words that they have learned receptively. What's more, students may not pay enough attention to the deep knowledge or quality of vocabulary so that they only know partially about some words. Therefore, teachers should teach students some spelling rules, encourage them to learn words in context, and more importantly to use words. Secondly, renew concepts on Strategic Learning Instruction. In the first phase of instruction, the students are required to know detailed information about themselves as learners, including strengths and weakness, attitude, motivation and anxiety level and so on, the natures of different learning tasks, the academic environment, and also a variety of strategies. And they are also trained to regulate and feedback their motivation, goal, and strategy use, and transfer their successful approaches to similar circumstances. In the second phase, students are mainly trained in using specific strategies systematically in different contexts. In the third phase, students should theoretically understand strategies do not stand alone, but interacted with other components, and practically integrate and coordinate the three components of strategic learning. Strategies can not be discriminated by the standard of good or bad, but that of appropriate or inappropriate.