A Study On Vocabulary Learning Strategies By Chinese EFL Learners

With the urgent call for life-long study and quality-education, the major objective of modern education is now experiencing a shift from a mere knowledge delivery, a "what" issue, to helping the learners to acquire the ways to learn, a "how" issue. This shift also finds its expression in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL). English teachers started to show concern on helping the learners to develop not only English skills but also English learning strategies.As the building block of a language, vocabulary learning has gained indefinite concern in English teaching and learning. However, The major past research is often focused on certain aspects, so that no clear overall picture emerges. In reality, however, learners tend to use a variety of strategies in combination. Moreover, in a Chinese context, the vocabulary learning strategies used by Chinese learners learning English as a foreign language (EFL) may be different from those used by western learners. To most of the Chinese undergraduates, learning vocabulary is the main problem met in the process of learning English. Therefore, the thesis aims at exploring vocabulary learning strategies used by Chinese EFL learners. The study is developed from O'Malley & Chamot's framework of learning strategies, in which metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies are included. Metacognitive strategies are higher order executive skills and used for learners to oversee, regulate, or self-direct their language learning. Cognitive strategies refer to the mental processes they use to acquire, sort, remember, and use information. Yet they found that learners used social/affective strategies less frequently and concluded they have little effect on language. Therefore, social/affective strategies are ignored in this study. This study attempts to answer the following questions:1) What types of strategies do Chinese EFL learners tend to employ in learning vocabulary?2) Are the vocabulary learning strategies used by high-proficiency learners different from those used by low-proficiency learners?3) What are the relationships between particular strategies and learning outcomes?The study adopts quantitative method to investigate learning strategies of Chinese EFL learners in vocabulary learning. The author compared the vocabulary learning strategies used by high-proficiency students (HPS) and low-proficiency students (LPS), and explored the relationship between vocabulary learning strategies and outcomes in learning English by means of questionnaire surveys and vocabulary knowledge tests. A vocabulary learning questionnaire was administered to 71 students at Baotou University of Iron & Steel Technology. The subjects were given a vocabulary size test, and their English language proficiency was established through scores on the matriculation examinations and the College English Test (CETBAND2).In order to examine whether the vocabulary learning strategies used by HPS are different from those used by LPS, 18 HPS and 18 LPS were chosen in accordance with their scores on both vocabulary size tests and English proficiency tests. T-tests were employed to compare the differences between the two groups.The major findings can be stated as follows: 1) Chinese EFL learners used a variety of learning strategies in vocabulary learning, including both metacognitive and cognitive strategies; 2) HPS did better in the use of metacognitive strategies. Among cognitive strategies, HPS used more contextualization, reading, resourcing, inferring and grouping strategies while LPS used rehearsal strategy more widely; 3) many vocabulary learning strategies correlated with learning outcomes. All the metacognitive strategies were positively correlated with vocabulary knowledge tests. At the cognitive level, contextualization and inferring were positively correlated with vocabulary knowledge tests. This indicate that the more often learners use metacognitive strategies, contextualiation and inferencing strategies, the higher scores on vocabulary...