An Empirical Study Of The English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used By Vocational College Students

Vocabulary is crucial in English listening,speaking,reading and writing.It is one of the most important components and plays a central role in language learning.Therefore,how to learn English vocabulary well has become a hot issue for English teachers and learners.Nevertheless,English learners still feel that vocabulary learning is difficult.In recent years,quite a few scholars have studied the beliefs and strategies of vocabulary learning,but the majority of the research objects are for middle school students and college students,relatively few for vocational college students.In this thesis,the vocabulary learning strategies used by vocational college students in Qinghai Vocational Health College are systematically and empirically studied.In this thesis,the definitions and classifications of language learning strategies and vocabulary learning strategies are argued and elaborated in detail.The research results on the application of vocabulary learning strategies in vocabulary teaching at home and abroad are sorted out.Based on Constructivism Theory,Memory Theory and Meta-cognitive Theory,this empirical study is completed.In this study,83 students from two nursing classes of Grade 2017 in Qinghai Vocational Health College are selected as the research objects.They are randomly divided into an experimental class and a control class,and a four-month teaching experiment is conducted.In the experimental class,three categories of vocabulary learning strategies are trained,while in the control class,traditional teaching methods are adopted.There are three research instruments: interview,questionnaire and vocabulary tests.The interview is conducted by randomly selecting ten students from four grades to conduct stratified interview.Questionnaire is used to investigate and analyze students' vocabulary learning beliefs and strategies before and after the experiment.The vocabulary tests are divided into pre-test and post-test.The vocabulary selected in the test paper comes from the textbooks used by students this semester.After being collected,the data of the questionnaire and test are analyzed by SPSS 19.0 software,and the results are discussed and summarized.The results show that: 1)Vocabulary learning beliefs of vocational college students are positive,although vocabulary learning is time-consuming and inefficient,most of them recognize the importance of vocabulary learning in language learning;2)Before the experiment,the frequency of the use of vocabulary learning strategies is low,and the students often use vocabulary learning strategies with simple information processing;3)After the teaching experiment,the frequency of the use of learning strategies increased,especially the frequency of meta-cognitive strategies and social/affective strategies has increased relatively obviously.4)The average score of vocabulary test of students in the experimental class is higher than that of students in the control class.This shows that the training of vocabulary learning strategies has a positive impact on the vocabulary achievement of vocational college students.Therefore,in English vocabulary teaching,teachers should guide and train students to use vocabulary learning strategies,and effectively infiltrate the training of vocabulary learning strategies into daily teaching.