| Vocabulary is of the greatest importance among the three elements of which language is made up. English vocabulary is so huge that students have to spend a great deal of time memorizing it, but however hard they try, the effect is not as expected. As a result, some students may lose their interest in learning English and may have less confidence in themselves. A vocational school student who majors in cabin service has several thousands of English words to learn and rote memory can't do the job. Therefore, these students need to master some vocabulary learning strategies to facilitate their acquisition of so large a vocabulary.In order to know the students'beliefs in English vocabulary learning and their frequency of using vocabulary learning strategies, an investigation was carried out on 120 cabin service majors in Nanjing Institute of Tourism & Hospitality by means of a questionnaire survey. The results revealed that the students had a generally low level of using vocabulary learning strategies, especially the meta-cognitive strategies and some cognitive strategies like encoding strategies; of the strategies studied, affective strategies were found to be used most often, suggesting some professional uniqueness. In addition, there was a big difference in the frequency of using learning strategies between students with high grades and those with lower grades.Based on the results of the questionnaire survey,40 students, out of the 120, were given a 3-month long training on vocabulary learning strategies involving meta-cognitive strategies, associative memory strategies, classification strategies and word-formation strategies. Results show that vocabulary learning strategy training can enhance subjects' awareness of using strategy, enable them to performe better in vocabulary tests and achievement tests, boost their confidence and improve their efficiency in vocabulary learning. |
